Page 281 - The Design Thinking Playbook

HOW MIGHT WE...

initiate digital transformation and

develop it step by step?

As mentioned, traditional companies must, metaphorically speaking, overcome a digital divide to bring
about digital transformation. Previously valid assumptions no longer apply, including product-centered
development, traditional hierarchical organizational structures, and a strong focus on market share and
physical transaction chains with intermediaries. In many industries, this means a transformation of the
whole organization. Possible steps to develop these skills might be:

1. Building up a new mindset with design thinking. New solutions and customer experiences are devel-
oped together with the customers (co-creation).
2. This type of work/collaboration is extended to the organization. As many teams as possible should be
able to collaborate in agile and transverse fashion. Teams of teams are formed, and the organization
changes from the inside out.

3. Many things can be scaled better if network effects are taken advantage of and integrated digital
business ecosystems are developed instead of individual products and services with singular unique
selling points.
4. This way of thinking can help, in a next step, to transfer the intelligence to decentralized structures
and to implement business processes and transactions without intermediaries. Agile, transversal
collaboration does not occur any longer solely on teams within the organization but across the whole
company.

It takes courage to peer into the depth of the digital divide for the first time. The world of digital business
is complex, and diverse, and it demands a new type of networked thinking on our part.

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