A lot of companies are screwed because for the first 40 years of its existence IT was basically a support/service function.
It was the same department that ordered stationary, arranged cleaners, photocopier maintenance.
It was a cost center, there to ensure things worked, it had staff few cared about. For many places "Digital departments" are still in darker smaller rooms, kept to one side, perhaps on the ground floor.
How many companies seem to relish unlocking the power of tech, in a meaningful way. How many tech people are on boards of large companies? How many Digital leaders have become CEO's? How many boards seek and listen to advice from thrusting entrepreneurs in the tech space?
And while some companies have got more enthusiastic about treating it not as a cost center, very few have seen it as something so transformative that it should be the environment in which everything is done.
Many "digital first" companies these days use technology to place advertising more effectively, to monitor inventory levels, to sell online.
But how many have reconsidered what technology has done to consumer expectations, how many have rethought their business model, how many have changed WHAT they make or HOW they make money. Most have changed the very most superficial things only.
Comments