Disruption 3.0: Pandemic has accelerated digitalization. Is your company ready?
In the 20+ years since Clayton Christensen introduced the word “disruption” into common business use, the phenomenon has magnified in its complexity. We now know, for example, that there is not just one kind of disruption, but rather several different patterns. The current pandemic makes understanding the patterns of disruption threats more urgent. Evidence suggests that some varieties of disruption — like tech platform disruption — remain misunderstood by many managers. And in general, managers who misunderstand the varieties of disruption do not fully appreciate the threats to their current business. What you don’t know can hurt your company.
Right now, as a consequence of the pandemic, many organizations are experiencing an accelerated shift toward digital transformation. This course, developed by Cutter Consortium Fellow Dr. Robert D. Austin, serves as a wake-up call and provokes a shift in thinking for organizations that want to fully appreciate the impact of digital technologies on their business models. Whether your organization has general managers who have been too busy to come to grips with ideas about digitalization, platform disruption, and the like; senior managers who need to ready their teams for the future ahead; or managers who want to gain a better understanding of digitalization's impact on incumbent industries, this executive education course will help you better understand the threat of disruption to your current business and help you begin developing a response to its presence..
Concrete Outcomes
Upon completing this program, participants will have:
- Come to a fuller understanding of what disruption means, in all its variety and complexity.
- Gained insight into what the phenomenon of digitalization means in business terms, and specifically in terms of how it could impact their company and industry.
- Begun to think more like digitally savvy business managers, which should allow them to better understand the nature of the threat from tech platform disruptors and similar enterprises, to negotiate with disruptors on their own terms (e.g., in terms of monetizing data), and to formulate appropriate and effective competitive counter punches.
Executive Education Format
This executive education program begins with an exploration of the classic disruption pattern (is Uber disruptive?) and discusses how to respond to disruption. Attendees will then take part in a Back Bay Battery Simulation, an online simulation developed by Clayton Christensen that is intended to help managers arrive at a visceral understanding of why classic disruption can be hard to avoid. Following the simulation, attendees will explore the concepts of platform disruption, platform envelopment, and architectural disruption, and will consider examples of each. Attendees will also take part in an exercise based on the Google Car case, which begins as a case discussion but then moves into a negotiation exercise between Google and a large automaker. Finally, this course presents an online case discussion of GE's digital transformation attempt, and reviews lessons learned.
Why Rob Austin?
Dr. Austin served as a professor on the faculty at Harvard Business School for more than a decade, and then as Professor of Management of Innovation & Digital Transformation at the Copenhagen Business School in Denmark. He is currently Professor of Information Systems at Ivey Business School in Canada and an affiliated faculty member at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Austin has consulted with and delivered education experiences to many multinational corporations, working mostly with C-level executives, including a customized program on digital transformation for Skanska. Recently, his "Cyberattack!" Simulation won the 2020 International Serious Play Gold Medal. He developed and delivers an annual program for top Japanese business executives, provided jointly with the MIT Center for Information Systems Research, at the Nomura School of Advanced Management. Dr. Austin was CEO of the largest provider of non-degree executive education in northern Europe. He also served as Chair of Harvard Business School’s executive program for CIOs.
What's Next?
For more details on bringing the executive education program on Disruption 3.0: Readying for the Accelerated Pace of Digitalization to your organization, complete the form below, send email to sales@cutter.com, or call us at +1 781 648 8700.