Designing the New Digital Innovation Environment

Abstract

If we think that the digital economy is uniquely driven by technology, we risk making a big mistake; to build a real digital business we need to integrate different ingredients. This effort could require, for example, putting the customers at the center of the business with complete control over what is happening around them, integrated logistics for the products that you sell, an obsession with quality, and of course, compelling technology. Still, technology is a true element of a new digital company and, in some cases, it is where the competitiveness and the originality of the products are created. Certainly, technology cannot be effective if it is not fully integrated into all the company’s processes and its organization. It also requires adequate, flexible, and low cost Information Systems. The understanding of which type of changes should be applied to these factors is therefore a key element of any digital transformation plan in order to fuel a profitable digital business. The organizational matter also crosses another very important aspect: the scouting, farming, and transformation of the competences of the personnel involved in the new digital business. These competences include new technical skills as well as an understanding of what is needed to transform the current information systems so that they can be used to map the journey from where you are today to where you want to be in the future. In this chapter we are going to explore such questions as:

• 1. What are the trends in new technologies and how are they influencing exponential organizations?

• 2. How are new technologies, like containerization, different data organization, and processing algorithms setting the ground for a new way to manage IT in enterprises?

• 3. Is it possible to build systems with very high quality, zero downtime and a very strong resiliency against negative events?

• 4. How should the approach to software development, testing and management be transformed?

• 5. What architecture should we use to build modular, elastic, adaptive, and much more efficient IT solutions?

• 6. How central is DevOps in the new IT world? Are Cloud and Utility Computing the same thing?

• 7. How are successful companies developing digital IT organizations that can both foster business innovation and assure robust and effective deployment?

• 8. Does one IT in our company still suffice or do we need at least three: transformational, traditional and autonomous?

• 9. How should the IT technical team be re-organized and reskilled to support this new development and support approach?

The chapter will introduce the reasons behind these changes and suggestions on what can be done to deal with this complex and articulated transformational challenge.

The views expressed in the paper are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the company.