Best in Class: The Top 10 Digital Transformation Articles
If we’ve learned anything over the last few years, it’s to expect the unexpected and always be ready for change. As the pace of digital progress continues to accelerate, this tip should be top of mind for business leaders entering 2019.
At the same time, we know it isn’t easy. Creating digital transformation strategies, gaining buy-in, and executing them across the organization is a huge challenge. To help, we’ve pulled together a list of the most valuable articles on the topic from credible resources across the web.
You won’t find a better-curated list anywhere.
Here are the most popular posts from global thought leaders that you can use to support your own digital transformation strategies.
1. Tech’s Ultimate Success: Software Developers Are Now More Valuable to Companies Than Money
Most business executives (61%) say not having enough software developers is a bigger threat to their business than lack of access to capital. 
So why do companies continue to misallocate their most precious resource? Collectively, companies waste software developers’ time and skills on projects focused on legacy systems and outdated technology at a price of $300 billion per year. When used to the top of their abilities, software developers could contribute $3 trillion to the global GDP in the next decade.
2. How to Be a Leader in the Fourth Industrial Revolution
In the Digital Revolution, leaders must be prepared to handle new business and workforce-related challenges. Today, an entirely new set of skills are necessary for ensuring sustainable business success. Now it’s leaders’ responsibility to provide the right tools and resources to develop them.
3. Digital Transformation Decoded: The CEO’s Playbook
What emerged as a competitive concept has quickly become the bare minimum companies can do to stay relevant. Today, solid digital transformation strategies are mandatory for managing internal costs and meeting customers’ demands for access, convenience, and efficiency. This CEO playbook goes over each element of digital transformation: who should lead it, what it looks like, and how to ensure its success. Read it, share it, save it.
4. Upskilling: Digital Transformation is Economic Transformation For All
Digital transformation and the integration of advanced technology tend to elicit fear about the potential to displace human jobs. But in developing countries, there is more enthusiasm for digital transformation strategies and their power to transform economies and businesses. “Digital transformation has the potential to empower millions of people to achieve more. Its potential for the region can be profound,” it says in the article.
5. Why So Many High-Profile Digital Transformations Fail
No one wants to fail under the spotlight. But that’s precisely what happened to GE in 2011. The company’s failed digital transformation led to the departure of CEO Jeff Immelt and several other senior executives. GE might be a standout example, but they are hardly the only high-profile company to hit roadblocks in their digital change efforts. We can learn several key digital transformation lessons from them.
6. Generation X — Not Millennials — is Changing the Nature of Work
Although millennials generally hog most of the attention in the discussion about generational differences at work, members of Gen X have a 
bigger influence on the evolving digital workplace. The report states that 54% of Gen X call themselves digitally savvy, similar to 56% of millennials. Gen Xers spend 40 minutes more per week on social media and spend more time on every type of mobile device. Sixty-seven percent of Gen X leaders are effective at “hyper-collaboration” and prioritize the dissolution of organizational silos. Read on for more surprising stats.
7. Why IT Gets Excluded From Digital Transformation Projects
You would think a company undergoing digital transformation would first turn to its in-house tech experts for guidance. But often, IT gets left out of the digital transformation dialogue. As technology becomes a bigger part of the core business, companies must take steps to protect and insure their digital investments.
8. Digital Transformation – Understanding and Unlocking the True Value
Every company has integrated digital capabilities to some degree, “but the true meaning of digital transformation is the change that enterprise needs to be continually undertaking in order to integrate and master the rapid effects of technology, before its competitors,” this article asserts. This is a top-notch explainer on the most disruptive and promising technology and leading companies that set an example in digital transformation.
9. Why German Companies Fail at Digital Innovation
In this article, German writer and entrepreneur Allison Williams poses the questions: “Why is disruptive innovation in the car industry coming more from the US and China than from Germany? Why does Made in Germany include no leading digital product? Why is there no German website among the 100 most visited? And why are we only in ninth place on the Global Innovation Index?” Williams argues there are four problems holding Germany back from leaping forward in the global digital transformation race.
10. The Internet of Things on an Industrialized Scale – Digital Transformation for Industry
While new entrants are born digital, older, more traditional industries are slow to integrate innovative technology. It’s not fear of unfamiliar 
tools that keep industries like manufacturing, utilities, and aerospace from creating successful digital transformation strategies — it’s fear of letting go of established and successful current practices. Read to find out how the industrial internet of things (IIoT) is beginning to challenge that.
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