Who Should Lead the Digital Transformation: An Article by Boston University’s Prof. Kane

Prof. Gerald Kane, a professor of Information Systems at Boston College, published an interesting post in the MIT Sloan Management Review blog on August 2018. The blog deals with the question who should lead the challenging journey of digital transformation.

The post is based on large-scale research with 4,300 managers, executives, and analysts “Which functional area is primarily leading your company’s digital progress?” The researchers observed that digital transformation is more of an organizational and managerial challenge than it is a technological one. As organizations mature, they are less likely to report that IT leads this digital progress; 23% of respondents at early-stage companies name IT as the primary leader of digitalization efforts, versus 16% at maturing companies. When digital progress is led by technologists, companies often end up with glittering technologies that either go unused or fail to meet the business’s objectives.

The findings of the research are summarized in the above table. One may see clearly that as the organization matures regarding its digital transformation, the CEO’s or their office takes the lead. 41% of maturing organizations report that the CEO’s office is leading the transformation.

Following are the links to Prof. Kane’s blog and to the full research.

In the e-book (Hebrew) “Doing Digital,” by Raz Heiferman and Prof. Yesha Sivan, you can find, in chapter 10, our discussion on digital maturity and in chapters 13 and 14 our discussion on who should lead this strategic transformation.

Following is the link to the e-book