Insights

(Source: BCG)

A lot of ink has been spilled telling the stories of companies felled by digital disruption— think Kodak or Blockbuster. What gets far less attention is the way traditional incumbents are winning at the digital game. For companies like Starbucks, John Deere, and Unilever, digital is driving new sources of competitive advantage, growth, and value creation. Incumbents have huge advantages—resources, customer relationships, and global scale, to name just a few—that when tied to the right digital strategy give them the edge over smaller rivals.

In our experience, successful digital transformation must rest on a foundation of smart digital strategy. And smart digital strategy, like traditional business strategy, is about making wise investment choices to maximize competitive advantage, growth, profit, and value—and then implementing with discipline.

(Source: BCG)

Incumbent businesses are right to be paranoid about the expanding impact of technological disruption. Of the top ten global companies by market capitalization a decade ago, only two have maintained their positions; many of the rest were replaced by digital natives. And we expect the list ten years from now to be at least as different from today’s: we know that only one-third of companies faced with industry disruption thrive, while the remaining two-thirds languish or fail. It is not surprising, then, that incumbents in many sectors are engaged in extensive digital transformation efforts in an attempt to inoculate themselves against the threat of disruption.