Welcome to the digital age!

Welcome to the digital age, where we've been for a couple of decades already, but we're still taking baby steps. In the past, most work involved creating physical products in physical environments using physical labor. Each person had defined tasks, and once completed, the product would move to the next person in line. Once all production phases were finished, the outcome was a physical product that was sold through physical sales channels with physical sales and marketing personnel. The goal was to sell as many products as possible to as many people as possible, as often as possible. Management did all the planning and gave orders while blue-collar workers executed the orders.

What has changed?

Above described way of doing things no longer applies to many of the industries due to a little thing called digital transformation. Digital transformation affects nearly every industry and changes customer behavior and expectations as well as how companies and whole societies operate. It's a change that nobody can ignore; you either adapt and survive or die out.

What has changed? Everything has changed, to put it simply. The change is happening at the business, company, and individual levels. The business context has changed from simple to complex, from concrete to abstract and intangible, and from predictable to unpredictable. Industry boundaries are also lower and more connected. The change is faster and more constant than ever before.

When the business context changes, it fundamentally changes the way companies do business. The value chain, once internal to a company, is now an ecosystem where companies collaborate to create value in different networks. It's no longer enough to create value for owners, but also for customers and society. Companies create services and experiences, which they can sell through multiple online channels to a global market. Distribution can also happen online, anytime and anywhere. Digital transformation offers new business opportunities and possibilities to automate, streamline, and standardize internal processes if companies reinvent themselves.

However, we haven't made ourselves future-proof digital business companies because we haven't changed our mindset and the way we do things. Digital transformation is by its nature holistic and horizontal, requiring teamwork and system-thinking across organizational boundaries. Creativity is necessary to innovate abstract ideas and work in an abstract environment using only our brainpower. System-thinkers can see the big picture, understand dependencies, and act as bridge-builders between different entities. Companies should see themselves as systems and think from the outside-in, understanding customer needs and journeys to build business models, offerings, capabilities, operating models, and strategies.