Most large companies seek to develop digital capabilities that resemble those of start-ups, yet often get entangled in complicated, daily operations. Thus, the challenge of continuously improving while also keeping older processes functioning smoothly is a major challenge. This may be compared to planning for any major city’s infrastructure. The case of three cities’ transformation may be instructive. Those cities – Dubai, Boston and Shanghai- have all faced countless, but diverse problems. Dubai has created glitzy, modern landmarks. The closest analogy would be of investing in the development of applications that go a long way towards digital transformation. Improving business analytics capabilities or developing high-impact apps would be one way of doing so.At Boston, the challenge was of weeding out older obstacles, and creating a new working environment. This may be compared to developing agility, so needed at older firms, similar to how Boston tackled its traffic issues through the Big Dig project. The third city on the list Shanghai’s case is akin to building something from scratch. This can best be done using cloud based technologies as they are most scalable.

Source:https://hbr.org/2017/08/leading-digital-transformation-is-like-urban-planning?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter_daily&utm_campaign=dailyalert&referral=00563&spMailingID=17784828&spUserID=OTY0OTMwNTk5NwS2&spJobID=1080147547&spReportId=MTA4MDE0NzU0NwS2

Uploaded Date:15 November 2017