Interesting piece from Forrester analyst James McQuivey who says that digital disruption is a bigger deal than you think.  I agree!

In his post, he mentions three key reasons why:

  • Digital disruption is already remaking even industries that have no digital products.  Think pharmaceutical and construction – no “digital products”, but James says these industries are already looking at how they exploit the opportunities afforded by digital disruption.
  • Digital will disrupt your product, but only if you let it disrupt your process. James argues that your company’s product experience can only be as digital as your company’s process enables. Apparently  just 39% of executives he surveyed believe that their companies have the policies and practices necessary to adapt to digital. This is a worry – the other 61% are in real trouble.
  • Digital disruption depends on free tools, and more free tools are coming.  This is so true.  With big data now easy to access, and platforms such as Twitter and Facebook that can get directly to consumers, disruption is now happening on a massive scale.

You can read the full post over at the Forrester blog.

Another great resource is the Deloitte Australia report titled “Digital Disruption – Short Fuse, Big Bang?”

My view around the issue of digital disruption is that to truly understand the issues, you need to understand digital.

To understand digital, you need to be deeply immersed in all things digital.  That means issues like the cloud, social media, big data, mobile and CRM as well as the emerging trends and platforms.

Only by being digital can you get digital.