Does your company need digital surgery?

Large companies looking to thrive in a digital world cannot simply bolt on solutions, according to futurist Peter Weill, but rather need to perform major surgery on the way their organisations work.

"The structures we’ve grown up with can’t just be added to or tweaked a little bit, they have to be rethought."
Peter Weill, Senior Research Scientist and Chair of the CISR at the MIT Sloan School of Management

Weill, a Senior Research Scientist and Chair of the Centre for Information Systems Research (CISR) at the MIT Sloan School of Management, says companies designed in a non-digital era need to take some hard medicine to survive.

“The way they were designed is usually for the sixties," he told BlueNotes in an exclusive interview. “For [times that were] pre-digital, or just the introduction of digital."

“So [for banks], we have to rethink what branches do, we have to re-think how we engage with customers. The structures we've grown up with can't just be added to or tweaked a little bit, they have to be rethought."

Weill said large groups needed to have a very clear vision of what it takes to be a digital company or a company in a digital era.

“I know this is hard medicine but large organisations will have to do organisational surgery," he said.

The views and opinions expressed in this communication are those of the author and may not necessarily state or reflect those of ANZ.

editor's picks

Business Finance

03 Mar 2015

Too big to fail or too big to manage?

Andrew Cornell | Past Managing Editor, bluenotes

“Too big to fail” is the moral hazard conundrum at the centre of the debate about the future of financial services, anchoring issues such as how the sector should be structured, regulated, financed. More than two dozen global banking behemoths have been officially designated too-big-to-fail or in regulator-speak “globally systemically important banks”.

Technology

04 Mar 2015

What could Silicon Harbour do for fintech in Australia?

Jayne Opperman | Former General Manager Technology, ANZ

If you’ve seen The Imitation Game or know about the calculation machine (computer) used by the British during World War II to break enemy codes, you may wonder how Silicon Valley in the US is the centre for innovation and the computing industry, rather than Bletchley Park in the UK.

Technology

12 Mar 2015

How incumbents can survive digital disruption

Claire Rogers | Former Head of Digital Strategy & Business Performance, ANZ

The digital revolution has completely shifted power in the marketplace from producer to the consumers in just 15 short years and as in all revolutions there have been winners and losers.