Ideas and insights for business leaders.
Studies consistently show that 70% of digital transformation initiatives fail to achieve their objectives. The pattern is remarkably consistent: organizations invest heavily in technology without adequately addressing the human and organizational factors that determine whether that technology creates value. Successful transformations start with a clear business case — not "we need AI" but "we need to reduce customer onboarding time from 5 days to 5 minutes." They invest as much in change management as technology. They start small, learn fast, and scale what works. And they measure success by business outcomes, not technical milestones. The technology is the easy part. The hard part is getting people to change how they work.
The companies best positioned to innovate are often the least likely to do so. Success creates organizational antibodies against change — processes optimized for current products, incentive structures that reward reliability over experimentation, and cultures that punish failure. Clayton Christensen called this the innovator's dilemma, and it remains the most powerful force in business strategy. Breaking through requires creating protected spaces for experimentation, separating innovation metrics from operational metrics, and building tolerance for the messy, nonlinear process of creating something new. Companies that master this balance don't just survive disruption — they drive it.