We look at this forward looking book, aiming to help you future proof your businesses. See more about Future Ready: The Four Pathways to Capturing Digital Value here.
Future Ready: The Four Pathways to Capturing Digital Value, reviewed
Many would argue that the future has come crashing into our boardrooms. Two years of pandemic lockdowns, then followed by a deeply problematic war breaking out, both of which, in their own ways massively affecting global supply chains, and reframing alliances and people you can and do not want to work with. Equally as well as who we do business with, how we do it has also come prominently into focus too. If you weren’t already thinking about how to potentially reposition your business now is the time, if either you haven’t, or you have perhaps already gone out of business.
The authors of this book, Woerner, Weill and Sebastian have applied themselves well to this task, and aimed to methodically offer you strategies and a road map to look at, embrace, and plan for the future. Their chosen method is to identify four pathways for engaging with the digital world, and trying to offer value in this environment. The insights are based on extensive previous research and have been synthesised to try and offer helpful tips and ideas for the reader to learn from and incorporate into their own business plans.
This book aims to help with a business transformation rather than merely discussing why and how you should be dealing with digital transformation. We are, hopefully, perhaps, beyond those days and that topic for discussion. This book could be a useful addition for many leaders looking to work out how to future proof their operations and remain ahead of the curve.
More about the book
To be a top performer in the digital economy—to become truly future ready—you need a playbook. Now you have one.
It seems like almost every company you can think of—including your own—has embarked on a “digital transformation” journey. The problem is, many companies start down the road without a good sense of where they are going or a clear idea of how they will create and capture digital value. Not surprisingly, this leads to problems: failure to realize the value from digital in their bottom lines, wasted resources and effort, added complexity and dysfunction.
This compact, no-nonsense book provides a solution. In their years of working with senior executives around the world, MIT research scientists Stephanie Woerner, Peter Weill, and Ina Sebastian noticed that these leaders knew they had to transform their businesses, but lacked a coherent framework and a common language—a playbook—to guide and motivate their employees and keep everyone focused on a common goal.
Future Ready is that playbook. Based on years of rigorous research with data from more than a thousand companies—BBVA, CEMEX, DBS, Fidelity, Maersk, and many others—the book provides a powerful, field-tested “four pathways” framework that offers insights into the important dimensions at which a firm must excel in order to be competitive, as well as the organizational disruptions that every firm must manage as part of the transformation journey.
The book includes instructive examples, sharp analyses, assessments to help companies benchmark themselves against top performers, and many illuminating visuals to help crystallize the data and ideas.
Woerner, Weill, and Sebastian show that the goal isn’t digital transformation but rather a profound business transformation. Future Ready is your essential guide for becoming a top performer in the digital economy.
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