Digital Disciplines

How does Information Technology enable competitive advantage? Digital Disciplines details four strategies that exploit today's digital technologies to create unparalleled customer value. Using non-technical language, this book describes the blueprints that any company, large or small, can use to gain or retain market leadership, based on insights derived from examining modern digital giants such as Amazon and Netflix as well as established firms such as GE, Nike, and UPS.

Companies can develop a competitive edge through four digital disciplines-information excellence, solution leadership, collective intimacy, and accelerated innovation-that exploit cloud computing, big data and analytics, mobile and wireline networks, social media, and the Internet of Things. These four disciplines represent the extension and evolution of the value disciplines of operational excellence, product leadership, and customer intimacy originally defined by Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema in their bestselling business classic The Discipline of Market Leaders.

• Operational excellence must now encompass information excellence-leveraging automation, information, analytics, and sophisticated algorithms to make processes faster, better, and more cost-effective, as well as to generate new revenue
• Product leadership must be extended to solution leadership-smart digital products ranging from wind turbines to wearables connected to each other, cloud services, social networks, and partner ecosystems
• Customer intimacy is evolving to collective intimacy-as face-to-face relationships not only go online, but are collectively analyzed to provide individually targeted recommendations ranging from books and movies to patient-specific therapies
• Traditional innovation is no longer enough-accelerated innovation goes beyond open innovation to exploit crowdsourcing, idea markets, challenges, and contest economics to dramatically improve processes, products, and relationships

This book provides a strategy framework, empirical data, case studies, deep insights, and pragmatic steps for any enterprise to follow and attain market leadership in today's digital era.

Digital Disciplines can be exploited by existing firms or start-ups to disrupt established ways of doing business through innovative, digitally enabled value propositionsto win in competitive markets in today's digital era.