Digital Strategy for Cutting-Edge Competitive Advantage
Apr 26, 2024Season 1Episode 1
Amit Prabhu
Prepare to redefine success with Amit Prabhu (Sweden), the author of the book "Digital Strategy Framework: A Practical Guide for Business Incumbents." In this episode, Amit shares cutting-edge knowledge on how digital transformation, generative AI, and human factors are fundamentally reshaping customer engagement, internal operations, and corporate culture. His extensive experience in various industry verticals provides a unique perspective on the digital evolution impacting businesses today.
Subscribe and join us for this thought-provoking exploration that promises to open up new perspectives on transformation, innovation and leadership.
About the host, Emi Olausson Fourounjieva. With over 20 years in IT, digital transformation, business growth & leadership, Emi specializes in turning challenges into opportunities for business expansion and personal well-being. Her contributions have shaped success stories across the corporations and individuals, from driving digital growth, managing resources and leading teams in big companies to empowering leaders to unlock their inner power and succeed in this era of transformation.
Prepare to redefine success with Amit Prabhu (Sweden), the author of the book "Digital Strategy Framework: A Practical Guide for Business Incumbents." In this episode, Amit shares cutting-edge knowledge on how digital transformation, generative AI, and human factors are fundamentally reshaping customer engagement, internal operations, and corporate culture. His extensive experience in various industry verticals provides a unique perspective on the digital evolution impacting businesses today.
Subscribe and join us for this thought-provoking exploration that promises to open up new perspectives on transformation, innovation and leadership.
About the host, Emi Olausson Fourounjieva. With over 20 years in IT, digital transformation, business growth & leadership, Emi specializes in turning challenges into opportunities for business expansion and personal well-being. Her contributions have shaped success stories across the corporations and individuals, from driving digital growth, managing resources and leading teams in big companies to empowering leaders to unlock their inner power and succeed in this era of transformation.
Hello and welcome to Digital Transformation for Humans with your host, amy. In this podcast, we delve into how technology intersects with leadership, innovation and, most importantly, the human spirit. Each episode features visionary leaders who understand that at the heart of success is the human touch nurturing a winning mindset, fostering emotional intelligence and building resilient teams. Today, we'll explore digital strategy for cutting edge competitive advantage with Amit Prabhu, our guest. Let's start the conversation and transform not just our technologies, but our ways of thinking and leading. Welcome to the studio, amit. I'm happy to see you today and, to start with, I would like to congratulate you with your book. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2:
Emi.
Speaker 1:
Just published in New York, and it is a huge event for the digital world. This is how it looks, by the way, and its name is Digital Strategy Framework a practical guide for business incumbents Exciting, just to present you a little bit and tell a few words about you before we jump into that exciting topic. I would like to mention that Amit has over a decade of corporate experience in business management, strategy and consulting. He holds a master's degree in telecommunications and networking from the University of Pennsylvania. Besides being the author of this amazing book, he is a business trainer, speaker, entrepreneur, and the two words which describe you best are explorer and teacher. Please take it from here and tell us a little bit more about yourself and all those exciting experience you've got with the big companies you've been supporting along your journey.
Speaker 2:
First of all, emi, thank you so much for having me here. It is my pleasure and my honor to be on your podcast, so I would just like to introduce myself very short. I am a consultant, an author, speaker, business trainer, a faculty, an entrepreneur and a swimming coach.
Speaker 1:
Exciting, that's amazing, and you've been working with big companies alike.
Speaker 2:
Yes, so I have been working with different companies across different industries, telco being my main domain, because over these years I have been working with a lot of telcos and the experience has been amazing, because every interaction, every single project always teaches you more. You connect with different people and you encounter some new challenges that help you learn, help you grow professionally. So, overall, the experience has been fantastic.
Speaker 1:
Sounds amazing. And speaking about your book and your main topic, the digital transformation, what is your definition of digital transformation? What is it all about?
Speaker 2:
Digital transformation is a new way of doing business with the help of latest emerging technologies. It's a very simple definition and I call it as the digital transformation equation. So digital transformation is equal to business plus emerging technologies. So digital transformation has two components First is the business component and second is the technology component. If we only have business but no technologies, then it is not digital transformation. And if we only have these technologies but there is no business transformation, then there is no digital transformation. No business transformation, then there is no digital transformation. So digital transformation is a new way of doing business with the help of these latest emerging technologies. And when I mean by business transformation, I mean that transformation in these three areas First is customer engagement, second is internal operations and third is the corporate culture. So when you cover up all these three areas, you cover up the entire organization.
Speaker 1:
That's fantastic, and when we are talking about this amazing transformation, it is actually not a process. It is a never-ending story and unfortunately for many companies it's coming to its end a little bit too early and not exactly in the way they were planning it. Would you like to share your experience about the success rate and those companies you have seen succeeding and falling flat while going through that transformational?
Speaker 2:
process. So, before I answer this question, I would just like to set up background and talk about more. What is a digital landscape? Because digital transformation has created a new digital landscape. So what does this landscape comprise? It comprises three main players First, the frontrunners, second, the entrepreneurs and third, the business incumbents. So who are the frontrunners? So frontrunners are these five digital technical giants Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple and Meta. So these five companies put together make the frontrunners, and why they are called the frontrunners is because these companies have the potential or have already impacted all the industries through some of their products or their services. Then we have the entrepreneurs that belong to different industries and they come up with some unique and some niche industry specific solution.
Speaker 1:
And then the third part, the third category, are the business incumbents tell more about them, because that's the exciting part, and I haven't heard so often that definition before, but in fact that's a very important area to focus on.
Speaker 2:
Yes, so I would come to that part. But just to give an example, who are the business incumbents? And since we are in the Nordics, so just to speak in the context of Nordics, the business incumbents are the Ericssons, the Volvos, the H&Ms, the Sandviks, the Atlas Copcos of the world. So who are these business incumbents? So these business incumbents have been in the business for at least more than four to five decades. They have presence in one or more than one industry. They are normally mid to large sized corporations and they have global operations. They have a rigid culture and a fixed hierarchy. They have healthy customer relationships. They have security, set processes, procedures and policies within their organizations and they have a strong branding and market dominance. And because of all these factors, what they have is they have an incumbent advantage, and this incumbent advantage is so important that it puts them in a very strong position to disrupt disrupt, actually, but in reality, that is not the case.
Speaker 2:
I would like to share a very interesting statistic. A very interesting survey was being made where all these business incumbents who participated in the survey were questioned that what actually led you to kick off the digital transformation, and the replies were very interesting 20% of these incumbents replied that we embarked on digital transformation because our competitors did so. 12% said that we did digital transformation because we felt pressure from our board. 30% of them said that we embarked on digital transformation because our customer told us to do so. 35% said that we did digital transformation because we were facing disruption threats from new players in our industry, and only 3% of them I repeat, only 3% of them said that we did digital transformation because we actually want to disrupt. So can you imagine the huge gap here? 97% of the business incumbents kicked off digital transformation reactively, whereas only 3% did it proactively just because they wanted to disrupt.
Speaker 1:
Incredible statistics and those numbers are really eye-opening to the reality. But in such a case it would be amazing to understand. What are those 3%? Could you tell more about them?
Speaker 2:
very good question. So, these three percent of the companies, they are very special ones. Why I call them special ones is that because, first of all, these companies embarked on the digital transformation much earlier, at the onset of the digital era. Now, what is this digital era? So we can say the year 2010 as the beginning of digital era, because what happened after 2010 was these digital transformation technologies like AI, automation, blockchain, gamification, cloud. They all started rising to prominence, people became commercially aware and there were more user applications and ecosystems created around it, and that actually marked the onset, or the beginning, of the digital era, the year 2010, because, also around that year, the word digital transformation was being coined. So we can say that the years before 2010 was the pre-digital era. Now, I am not saying that these technologies didn't exist before 2010. They did exist, but they were mostly in the R&D state and they only rose to prominence and people became commercially aware in the digital age after 2010. So what these 3% of the companies did was as soon as these technologies came up into the market these were the early adopters came up into the market. These were the early adopters. They adopted them very fast and what actually led to their adoption was, of course, if you observe all these companies, they had some amazing dynamic digital and visionary leaders at the top and that actually helped them in adopting these technologies very fast.
Speaker 2:
I can give you a very good example. In fact, I have mentioned this example in my book also, and I'm really inspired by this company. It is a business incumbent. In fact, it is a bank in Singapore established somewhere in the 60s and 70s. The name of the bank is DBS, and DBS is a very strong example of these 3% of the business incumbents who have actually disrupted the market. So if you ask the employees of DBS do you work for a bank? They will give you a very interesting reply. They will say that we don't work for a bank. We work for a data and AI company that happens to be in the banking sector Interesting Absolutely. It's amazing. Look at the framing. I mean, it said so many things right, and this message comes right from the top management, right from their dynamic CEO, piyush Gupta.
Speaker 1:
That's a real game changer.
Speaker 2:
Absolutely.
Speaker 1:
The message comes right from the top.
Speaker 2:
Yes, so it is so amazing, right? If you ask even the CEO do you work for a, I mean, do you lead a bank? He would say no, I lead a data and AI company that happens to work in the banking. And if you ask Piyush Gupta that whom do you compete with? He would say that we compete with all these technological companies like Amazon, Google, meta. We always strive to be like them, so that is what their vision is and that is what their mission is. They are continuously innovating and continuously adopting themselves to be a part of the technical companies, and that is their framing, the whole, framing their positioning in the market. It's phenomenal. So if you have this kind of a mindset, this kind of a leader at the top, and if the message goes right down into the hierarchy, to all the employees, imagine the kind of the culture this company must be having.
Speaker 1:
So such transformation is inevitable. It's bound to happen. That's really inspiring. Thank you for sharing this story, because it is about the mindset, it is about the new way of seeing things and implementing processes and all the rest of the transformation in a way which actually matches their goals and the reality they are operating in goals and the reality they are operating in. So this is really valuable for many companies who are still a little bit stuck in the past, where they have been something else. But maybe it is time to redefine the playground, and this is an amazing reminder about that. And now AI is hype in generative AI is everywhere and the definition of digital transformation is going under the level of visibility and is getting covered by all AI. So how do you think that AI and the latest trends are fitting into the definition of digital transformation? Is it something different? Is it a part of it? How is it going to match and play further?
Speaker 2:
Generative AI is a digital transformation technology, but it's just how it has been branded, because it has been branded and promoted as generative AI or Gen AI. It has not been branded as a generative AI or another new digital transformation technology, but Gen AI is a digital transformation technology. Let's go by the definition. What is the definition of digital transformation? It's a new way of doing business with the help of latest emerging technology. Now, with GenAI, you can do lots of business transformation. You can impact the customer engagements, you can impact the internal operations, you can impact the corporate culture. So, by definition, jni fits as a digital transformation technology, but it's just that how it has been branded and it has been positioned. So there has been a lot of hype about jnai, so that's why you see jnai coming in the foreground, whereas digital transformation taking a backseat.
Speaker 1:
But it is still the digital transformation technology that sounds really reassuring and defines that, that we are still actually playing the same game, just with some new.
Speaker 1:
Exactly introduced exciting technologies, and that is really something very impressive. We are going through these times are going to redefine the future, and we are not only witnessing it but also participating in that transformation, so it is both honor and a huge responsibility. Thank you so much for being here today, amit, and sharing your experience. I'm sure that many leaders and experts working in the field of digital are going to apply your recommendations and your experience, and hopefully they are also going to take a look at your book, where they can find a lot of valuable information, and I know that now it is available on Amazon and they can also connect with you on LinkedIn if they would like to discuss something in detail. So thank you so much for being here today and I'm looking forward to the next conversations with you.
Speaker 2:
Thank you so much, Emi, for having me.
Speaker 1:
Thank you for joining us on Digital Transformation for Humans. I'm Emi and it was enriching to share this time with you. Remember, the core of any transformation lies in our human nature how we think, how we feel and how we connect with others. It's about enhancing our emotional intelligence, embracing a winning mindset and leading with empathy and insight. Subscribe and stay tuned for more episodes where we uncover the latest trends in digital business and explore the human side of technology and leadership. Until next time, keep nurturing your mind, fostering your connections and leading with heart.