Digital Innovation & Strategy: Readings to help your learning
Through the module Managing Strategy and Innovation we discussed many interesting readings. I decided to pick 5 of them and share some critiques and reflections for the paper. They are:
Raymond F. Zammuto et al. (2007). “Information Technology and the Changing Fabric of Organization."
Yoo et al. (2012) “Organizing for Innovation in the Digitized World”
Joseph L. Bower and Clayton M. Christensen (1995) “Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave”
Michael E. Porter (2001)“Strategy and the Internet”
Maxwell Wessel and Clayton M. Christensen (2012) “Surviving Disruption”
*I do not have the access to share such articles online, due to these been accessed through my College library, if you find it online, it worth reading!*
These five readings include a variety of different points and ideas, such as the importance of maintaining a competitive advantage, value proposition, flexibility for change, technology-driven, agility for business change, a collaborative organization and strong hierarchy structure, business strategy and business units, technology and its relationship with companies and end-users. However, they all discuss and stress the importance of technology in business strategy and all of them display positive approaches in adopting technology as part of a company’s business model.
One cannot argue against technological benefits for a company but the process of design, implementation, management and maintenance of technology and its systems are as important as what type of technology to develop. There are, however, certain businesses which may not need technology as much as other industries, such as elements of the legal sector where the courts still require human skill and judgement. It is noteworthy that technology over the decades has influenced companies in various aspects, with a glance to the past we can realize how technology changed day-to-day habits, such as CCTV systems available 24 hours on smartphones, ordering products online, topping-up phone credit online, customers virtual support (chatbot), face recognition machines, digital passports, eLearning, automatic cars, and many others. It is acknowledged that those impacts will continue to advance in the future and may lead to architectural changes of the entire business process, for instance, the Blockchain revolution discussed by Lakhani and Iansiti (2007).
It is relevant to mention that the five readings do not disagree about the implementation of technology. However, the arguments are limited because it does not explore the actual real-world environment. Such as government policies to attract (or detract) IT-Driven industries, regulation, economy, legal structure etc. From this perspective, it is relevant to explore an external analysis through PESTEL, for example, where companies can better understand their macro environment of Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental and Legal. (Johnson et al., 2014). Meanwhile, human interpretation still plays a significant role in business, and the CEO still holds the main responsibility in deciding the future of a company. A company’s internal structure might have a higher emphasis on human interaction rather than solely on IT. For example, in the mid-2000’s The Walt Disney Company, a multinational company famous for its innovative and creative products struggled to release new creative content to its customers but there was no limit in resources, there was available cash flow, available technology, they just lacked new creativity. When Bob Iger become CEO in 2005, he realised that the company needed something new to increase market share. The Walt Disney Company had the vision to acquire Pixar in 2006, not because of its technologies and resources available, but because the CEO believed in the organizational structure of the company, where managers and teams that worked collaboratively was better than a focus on a hierarchical structure. The Walt Disney Company was back to the top of the creative world while investing and entering a variety of sectors and markets, such as China. (Gate, 2015).
Through this analysis, is relevant to note that sometimes a company can remain stagnant not for a shortage of resources or technological innovation, but, the internal structure and culture are not well defined and there is no technology to apply to help how the company operates and grow.