Research & Content.

Business leaders around the world feel the urgency to adopt more digital ways of doing things but fear their organizations are unable to keep up with the pace of change or take full advantage of the technology investments they’ve made, according to a new survey from Harvard Business Review Analytic Services. Faced with a variety of disruptive forces—new competition from companies that were born digital, increasing globalization, and customers with high expectations for a friction-free digital experience—they know their survival is on the line.

The winds of disruption have swept aside old ideas about how a business operates and the pace at which it needs to move. The future is being built on new technologies, data, and digitization. Fast-moving, cross-functional teams of people from different parts of the organization experiment and innovate together to deliver new products and capabilities at an unprecedented pace. The old leadership rules don’t apply. In this report, we explore how leading organizations are transforming in the face of disruption so they come out as the beneficiaries and not the victims of change. More than a dozen top chief information and digital officers—true transformation masters—share their secrets for breaking down walls, resetting expectations, and leading in a completely new model. In the process, they are rewriting the rules of CIO leadership.

A few years ago, the concept of two-speed (or bimodal) IT was all the rage. Chief information officers (CIOs) could develop new digital capabilities quickly using an agile approach while running core IT operations and services in a traditional way. While this may have been a good way to get started on the digital path, today IT leaders realize that digital transformation requires applying agile principles and practices much more broadly throughout the organization. Sponsored by IBM

Business leaders looking to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their workforce are extending their digital efforts beyond what we typically think of as knowledge workers to include maintenance workers, shop clerks, nurses, flight attendants, electricians, baristas, store managers, and others. Indeed, the vast majority of respondents to a recent global survey from Harvard Business Review Analytic Services believe this will be essential to their organization’s success in the future. Sponsored by Microsoft

Three very different organizations - a university, a hospital, and a sports entertainment business - are using the Internet of Things (IoT) to create a more compelling, engaged customer experience across the digital and physical worlds. Sponsored by Dimension Data

A vast majority of business leaders surveyed believe their industry will be disrupted by digital trends. And most of those said their industry has either passed the inflection point of disruption or will pass it by 2020—just three years away. However, just which businesses will be the winners and losers in this digital economy is still being determined. Companies that form their strategies now, shift resources to new digital initiatives, and redesign their organization and culture will have a distinct advantage. Sponsored by Microsoft

CEOs increasingly want their CIOs to help generate revenue for their organizations. However, while shifting attention to the top line, CIOs still have to watch costs and balance them against likely returns. This requires a deep understanding of their organizations’ business and customer needs, as well as staying on top of the latest technology trends. CIOs who have experience running a P&L or a startup bring much-needed experience to this new role. Sponsored by Red Hat

One of the most exciting developments of the digital economy is the ability to answer difficult questions and solve complex problems through the use of sophisticated tools. Cloud-based data and analytics platforms are a boon to organizations given the volume and variety of data, the speed with which a lot of data expires, and the variability of business people’s need to tap into particular data sources at any given time. Sponsored by IBM

A wave of disruption is threatening businesses around the world, as new entrants with structural cost advantages and a “digital first” culture spring up in a wide range of industries. The new competitors offer solutions that are often simpler, cheaper, or more convenient for customers. They display the ability to leverage digital technologies to understand the customer, sense market shifts, and innovate faster than the competition. Sponsored by IBM

In the connected economy, value is created through the technology-enabled links between people, machines, and organizations. But we are still in the early stages of the shift to the connected economy (CE). Less than a fifth of the roughly 700 respondents to a new global survey from Harvard Business Review Analytic Services say they employ CE business models, products, or processes to a significant extent today. But what exactly does it mean for a company to be among the CE leaders? Sponsored by IBM

Over the next three years, cloud services will penetrate deeper into organizations’ computing environments at an accelerated rate. Companies that take an ad hoc approach miss out on many of cloud’s benefits and experience a variety of pitfalls. In this guide, we provide a framework for taking a more strategic, planned approach to cloud while still moving quickly. Sponsored by Oracle

The shift to a digital economy is creating a talent crisis that is putting companies survival—and CIOs’ own careers—on the line. Competition for a finite pool of skilled technologists and IT leaders is sharply increasing as organizations of all types rely more heavily on digital technology. At the same time, the nature of the skills that organizations need in IT is changing. Sponsored by Red Hat

Customer experience (CX) has become a remarkably sophisticated discipline, according to new research from Harvard Business Review Analytic Services. Driven by tech-savvy customers, it requires new processes and organizational structures, and often the reorientation of an entire organization’s culture. Creating an extraordinary customer experience depends on having the right people and skills in place to deliver and the right technology—from the analytics that provide customer insight to the applications consumers “touch” to the networks that support them. Sponsored by Verizon