Recognizing and outmaneuvering the resistance to digital transformation

Abstract

Purpose The author reports on the chief obstacle to successful digital adoption, the resistance to change the fundamental way a firm is managed—one requiring a transformation from industrial-era management to digital-age thinking and management. Design/methodology/approach The author explains that it has become increasingly apparent that the most successful firms at digital transformation are being run very differently from industrial-era management practices. Findings As every company becomes a digital company, they need a distributed computing fabric to build, manage, secure and deploy applications anywhere. Practical implications The use of “low code/no-code technology” is now “rapidly becoming a priority for every organization’s digital capability building”. Originality/value The crucial learning: At Novartis, digital technology did not initially infuse itself throughout the firm as management initially hoped. Some Novartis managers began to realize that technologists and data scientists alone couldn’t bring about the kind of wholesale innovation the business needed, so they began pairing data scientists with business employees who had insight into where improvements in efficiency and performance were needed.