5 Questions Boards Should Be Asking About Digital Transformation
01/07/2021
The CEO of a large retail company recently brought a $500 million digital-transformation-investment plan to his board. The board reviewed the proposal, but after asking a number of questions, they were unable to evaluate it. Was it too costly? Was it aiming too low? Was it focused on the right priorities? One board member admitted […]
What’s next for digital consumers
18/06/2021
The COVID-19 pandemic has driven rapid adoption of digital channels across countries and industries, but digital’s growth has plateaued in the past six months and may begin to slip back once the pandemic eases—even as total digital adoption stays well above prepandemic levels. That’s one of the findings from a new McKinsey survey of global […]
Inside IKEA’s Digital Transformation
15/06/2021
What does it mean for one of the world’s most recognizable retail brands to go digital? For almost 80 years, IKEA has been in the very analogue business of selling its distinct brand of home goods to people. Three years ago, IKEA Retail (Ingka Group) hired Barbara Martin Coppola — a veteran of Google, Samsung, […]
The future of the $1.5 trillion wellness market
11/06/2021
The concept of wellness has been around for a long time. Remember Jane Fonda workout tapes, neon legwarmers, and the “cookie diet”? These days, consumers view wellness through a much broader and more sophisticated lens, encompassing not just fitness and nutrition but also overall physical and mental health and appearance. They also have more choice in […]
Transformation in uncertain times: Tackling both the urgent and the important
10/02/2021
In ordinary times, successful leaders continually strive to master the balance between the urgent and the important, both in their organizations and their daily schedules. But today’s CEOs face unprecedented financial, health and safety, and operational challenges. For them, the problem isn’t balancing the urgent with the important. It’s that most everything is both urgent […]
How to find and maximize digital value in any M&A deal
17/11/2020
The digital revolution is changing the dynamics of M&A transactions. IT used to represent a cost that needed to be managed and controlled as two organizations came together. Today, IT and digital capabilities are often the driving force behind the transaction. But, even when an acquisition centers around a company’s other attractive assets, digital capabilities […]
A Measured Approach to Regulating Fast-Changing Tech
06/11/2020
Paul Taylor/Getty Images Amid the economic upheaval caused by Covid-19, technology-driven disruption continues to transform nearly every business at an accelerating pace, from entertainment to shopping to how we work and go to school. Though the crisis may be temporary, many changes in consumer behavior are likely permanent. Well before the pandemic, however, industries and […]
How nine digital front-runners can lead on AI in Europe
27/10/2020
Globally, researchers are working to discover how artificial intelligence (AI) can be usefully applied across a range of commercial and public-sector situations. Much of the most exciting work is taking place in tech clusters, particularly in China and the United States, which are attracting some of the brightest global talent. Europe is also seeing rising […]
Tech Should Enable Change, Not Drive It
22/10/2020
Hiroshi Watanabe/Getty Images The world is changing in rapid, unprecedented ways, but one thing remains certain: as businesses look to embed lessons learned in recent months and to build enterprise resilience for the future, they are due for even more transformation. As such, most organizations are voraciously evaluating existing and future technologies to see if […]
Tech Is Transforming People Analytics. Is That a Good Thing?
22/10/2020
Illustration by Shani Pleasants A century ago, Frederick Taylor’s Scientific Management laid the foundations for modern HR. His central premise was that organizations should turn their workplaces into real-world psychology labs, measuring and monitoring employees’ every move in order to boost their performance and reduce their stress levels. The paradigm was revolutionary, and led famous […]
How CPG companies can adapt their digital marketing in the next normal
15/10/2020
At many US consumer-packaged-goods (CPG) companies business has been turned on its head. Even for companies in categories that experienced rapid growth, the past several months have been dizzying. A historic drop in US consumer confidence was accompanied by pantry loading for essential items such as household supplies (up 76 percent in March) and packaged […]
How COVID-19 has pushed companies over the technology tipping point–and transformed business forever
09/10/2020
In just a few months’ time, the COVID-19 crisis has brought about years of change in the way companies in all sectors and regions do business. According to a new McKinsey Global Survey of executives, 1 1. The online survey was in the field from July 7 to July 31, 2020, and garnered responses from […]
How to win with digital marketplaces
10/09/2020
Digital marketplaces have been the buzz of the consumer industry for the past several years, yet many brands and retailers still struggle to understand if and how to partner successfully with them. As a result of marked shifts in consumer behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic, digitization has accelerated even further: 40 percent of consumers are […]
How companies can create value from digital ecosystems
08/09/2020
While ecosystem-building has been a red-hot topic in the business world in recent years, the COVID-19 crisis has amplified the importance of digital interactions and will likely further accelerate the adoption of digital-ecosystem business models. Our global consumer sentiment surveys indicate that the spike in online sales will continue to some extent even after the […]
Lessons from Chinese Companies’ Response to Covid-19
28/08/2020
The past months have provided an opportunity to study a once-in-a-lifetime moment — how companies function during an unprecedented global pandemic while also navigating an accelerated shift to digital operations. China was weeks ahead of the rest of the world in dealing with the pandemic and its fallout, so their experience is of interest. We […]
Reskilling workers for industry 4.0
26/08/2020
Technological progress is enabling machines to complete many of the tasks that once required human beings. That new automation revolution will have a major effect on employment in the coming years. Nearly every job will change, many quite profoundly, and the overwhelming majority of today’s employees will need to develop new skills. Preparing for the […]
Companies Need to Rethink What Cybersecurity Leadership Is
27/07/2020
Jorg Greuel/Getty Images For businesses today, cyber risk is everywhere. Yet for all the investments they’ve made to secure their systems and protect customers, companies are still struggling to make cybersecurity a vibrant, proactive part of strategy, operations, and culture. The root cause is twofold: (1) Cybersecurity is treated as a back-office job and (2) […]
The telltale signs of successful Digital M&A
03/07/2020
The old saw that the best deals are the ones you don’t make doesn’t apply when it comes to digital acquisitions—you’ve got to make them, research has consistently shown. You also need to do them well, and that can be challenging, because buying in the digital, analytics, and technology space—what we call “digital deals”—is different […]
How business leaders can plan for the next normal
30/06/2020
Dealing with the coronavirus crisis and its aftermath could be the imperative of our times. Indeed, we have argued that it augurs the “imminent restructuring of the global economic order.” As Ian Davis, one of our previous managing partners, wrote in 2009 in the midst of the global financial crisis: “For some organizations, near-term survival is […]
Setting up small and medium-size enterprises for restart and recovery
19/06/2020
Governments’ economic responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have included an array of measures to help people and businesses weather the storm. Small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) are in an especially difficult position. Plunging demand has forced them to lay off workers, and many don’t have the financial resources to survive in this climate. In many […]
Preparing for the next normal via digital manufacturing’s scaling potential
17/06/2020
The coronavirus pandemic is changing manufacturing operations to a degree never before seen. As organizations and leaders seek to ensure the health and safety of their people, they are also reacting to supply-chain shifts that are impacting sourcing and distribution logistics. Supplier resilience is being brought into sharp focus, and labor shortages are bringing many […]
Why Now Is the Time for “Open Innovation”
16/06/2020
Jorg Greuel/Getty Images Amidst the gloom and doom of the early months of the Covid-19 crisis, something surprisingly uplifting started to happen: Companies began to come together to work openly at an unprecedented level, putting the ability to create value before the opportunity to make a buck. The German multinational Siemens, for instance, opened up […]
Digital collaboration for a connected manufacturing workforce
15/06/2020
Many experts predicted that with the coming of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), automation and advanced technologies would rapidly displace factory jobs and workers world-wide. Thus far, this prediction has not panned out. In fact, our research with the World Economic Forum (WEF) reveals that leading factories (“Lighthouses”) have invested significantly in people. And the […]
Digital adoption through COVID-19 and beyond
11/06/2020
By now, most C-suite executives have led their companies to digitize at least some part of their business to protect employees and serve customers facing mobility restrictions as a result of the COVID-19 crisis. As one CEO of a large tech company recently stated, “We are witnessing what will surely be remembered as a historic […]
How to scale your digital transformation
04/06/2020
When a team of top executives from a North American bank entered a converted warehouse run by a European telecom giant, they couldn’t believe what they were seeing. Engineers were live-coding in small teams with designers and businesspeople and reviewing the results right away with customers. They were making adjustments to feedback on the fly. […]
How to restart stalled digital initiatives and transformations
02/06/2020
At organizations pursuing digital transformations, more than seven in ten survey respondents say the progress of these efforts has slowed or stalled at some point. In their latest McKinsey Global Survey on the topic, 1 1. The online survey was in the field from May 16 to May 31, 2019, and garnered responses from 1,256 C-level […]
Driving digital change during a crisis: The chief digital officer and COVID-19
29/05/2020
Amid the humanitarian crisis that has upended lives and cast a veil of uncertainty over the future, one thing is clear: we are living in a much more digital world. As governments around the world institute nationwide lockdowns, the demand for digital services and products, from both customers and employees stuck at home, has hit […]
Direct-To-Consumer Brands Are Finding New Ways To Engage With Customers
27/05/2020
Even before the pandemic arrived, acquisition channels and costs were on the top of mind for a lot of direct-to-consumer brands. Since they can’t rely on exposure through big retail chains and online marketplaces, they have to find their own ways to reach customers while staying cost-effective. A lot has changed in the world over […]
The digital-led recovery from COVID-19: Five questions for CEOs…
27/05/2020
There’s a popular meme going around that neatly captures the tipping point of digital. It’s a short questionnaire asking who is driving your digital transformation. The first two options are “CEO” and “chief digital officer.” Below that, highlighted with a bright red circle, is “COVID-19.” The coronavirus pandemic is a humanitarian crisis that continues to […]
How the CPG industry can prepare for the next normal
07/05/2020
As the coronavirus pandemic spreads across the globe, threatening both lives and livelihoods, consumer-packaged-goods (CPG) manufacturers continue to play an important role: producing essential items we all rely on for our health and well-being. CPG leaders have focused on meeting this demand while guarding the safety of employees and customers. At the same time, forward-thinking […]
How the Coronavirus Crisis Is Redefining Jobs
06/05/2020
Martin Barraud/Getty Images The outbreak of Covid-19 has forced organizations into perhaps the most significant social experiment of the future of work in action, with work from home and social distancing policies radically changing the way we work and interact. But the impact on work is far more profound than just changing where people work; […]