Embracing digital disruption

How can large Australian organisations, with entrenched business models, survive the era of digital disruption?

That’s the central theme of ‘CXO Challenge’, a research project I’ll be working on for the next 12 months, formally announced earlier this week at an event hosted by the Australian Computer Society in Melbourne.

Specifically, I’ll be studying the strategies and tools business leaders are employing to meet the needs of the digital consumer.

Digital disruption, as defined by a recent Sydney University study, broadly refers to:

“Changes enabled by digital technologies that occur at a pace and magnitude that disrupt established ways of value creation, social interactions, doing business and more generally our thinking.”

This presents to all in the business community both a crisis and an opportunity.

From media to telecoms, financial services to utilities, we’ve seen disruption at work. Consider the impact of online classifieds sites on the revenues of newspapers, of over-the-top messaging on long distance call revenue among telcos, or the advent of the digital camera on the traditional photography industry.

Every industry, to some degree, has had to revisit its value proposition to customers in the wake of digital disruption, and many more are ripe for disruption.  

Over the next 12 months, I plan to profile many of the country's most influential technology and business executives as they navigate this changing landscape. I’ll be complementing these profiles with feature stories on digital disruption in several key industries, and by 2015 produce a final research report.

The key questions I’m looking to answer:

• How can business leaders ‘disrupt’ from the inside?

• What are the right structural models for embracing disruption within traditional industries, without putting existing revenues and value propositions at risk?

• What is core to any large Australian organisation? Where does its value lie for customers?

• What are the skills required by business executives, and those within their technology function, to embrace digital disruption?

I’d like to thank the Australian Computer Society for recognising the need for this study and encouraging me to pursue it.

You can follow my progress by subscribing to the iTnews newsletter, or on my Twitter or LinkedIn.