Christopher Vollmer (1) Digital Disruption

It’s time to stop wasting money and start your company’s digital transformation. Christopher Vollmer, Managing Director of Strategy& Digital Services, explains how to start using digital to fuel your company’s growth today.

Digital disruption is, according to Vollmer, about (a) great change driven by technology, (b) huge business model and product innovation, and (c) significant changes in customer behavior.  The disruptor may be an up-and-coming start up or it may be a major player in an adjacent industry that, up until now, wasn't on your competitive radar.  In either case, if you're the CEO of an established company, you undoubtedly have a bulls eye on your back, and if you're standing still to boot, you make your company a much easier target for an upstart or a flank attack.

So what are you to do?  

First, it isn't just making improvements to your current business, but rather it's re-imagining how you do business, where you do business, and even what business you do.  Second, you must put digital at the center of your strategy.  I believe digital should be well within your radar, but what should be dead center depends a lot on your vision and mission; priorities, aims and values; and people, their capabilities and potential.  Finally, you must keep customers front and center.  The key phrase from Vollmer is human-centered design thinking.  You as the CEO must engage your company with customers on creating, testing and driving product and service development.  While Steve Jobs seem to have eschewed the very things Vollmer suggests, he had an uncanny ability to discern deeply what mattered the most to customers and he had the marketing prowess to convince them that Apple had what mattered the most to them.  Which is actually what Vollmer suggests.