Leading Digital Transformation: Accelerate Change for Business Impact

Today, every business is a digital business. But the task for legacy incumbents is fundamentally different than for a startup. How do you transform a business that started before the internet, so it can survive and grow in the digital economy?

Executive surveys show as many as 70 percent of digital transformation efforts are failing to achieve their desired impact. The reasons are numerous. Companies pursue a generic goal to “be digital” without defining why. Digital efforts are disconnected from business strategy. Managers focus on benchmarks, cost-cutting, and cautious planning. Digital innovations occur but they never scale to achieve real impact. And most fundamentally, leaders try to transform their business without changing their “business as usual” culture, process, and capabilities.

The good news: real digital transformation is possible. We can begin to see how by studying the hard-fought lessons of companies as diverse as Walmart, Citi, The New York Times, Ford Motors, Pfizer, Air Liquide, United Technologies, and more.

Leading Digital Transformation focuses on how executives can reorient their business for the digital age and drive the kind of deep organizational change that is essential to securing a future in the digital era. Participants leave with a set of practical frameworks, relevant case studies, and the first draft of their own roadmap for digital transformation.
 

For a first look at the faculty's thought leadership, we invite you to download the first chapter of David Rogers' bestselling book, The Digital Transformation Playbook.

The program will provide you with the leadership frameworks, methodologies, and real-world case studies needed to lead your organization to adapt and thrive in the digital age.

You will learn to:

• Align stakeholders with a compelling vision of what digital means for your business
• Ensure your digital efforts are growth-focused and business-led, with a clear set of strategic priorities
• Rethink your customers, competition, data, innovation, and value proposition for the digital era
• Accelerate change by focusing on customers, experimentation, and rapid learning
• Scale digital innovations to achieve real impact across the organization
• Design new operating models, processes, and governance for digital acceleration
• Build essential long-term capabilities and a partner ecosystem
• Lead the cultural change your business needs for the digital future
• Take an iterative approach to transformation in order to reap immediate benefits

Upon completion of this program, you will earn three credits towards a Certificate with select alumni and tuition benefits. Learn more.

Leading Digital Transformation combines a mix of dynamic lectures, interactive discussion, and group work in small teams. Sessions focus on leadership frameworks and tools for organizational change. Executives apply the tools of the course to real-world businesses as well as work on a digital transformation roadmap for their own organizations.

Concepts will be illustrated through cases of companies in diverse industries – including financial services, retail, media, consumer goods, industrial b2b, healthcare, automotive, and technology.

Sample Session Titles:

• Defining the Digital Challenge: Transformation and Its Barriers
• Why Transformations Fail: The 6 Success Factors of Digital Transformation
• Transforming Process: the 3 Paths Model and Lessons from Amazon to Citi
• Transforming Culture: How Stories, Symbols, and Leaders Shape Behavior
• The 5 Domains of Digital Transformation: A Strategy Framework
• Rethinking Data and A.I. as a Source of Competitive Advantage
• The Problem-Opportunity Matrix
• Innovation Through Rapid Experimentation: A/B testing and MVP’s
• Scaling Startup Methods for the Enterprise: Agile, Lean, Design Thinking, and Beyond
• Your Digital Transformation Roadmap

For a first look at the faculty's thought leadership, we invite you to download a sample chapter of David Rogers's bestselling book, The Digital Transformation Playbook.

Leading Digital Transformation is designed for upper- to senior-level executives responsible for leading digital transformation—including organizational change, strategy, and innovation—in their companies, or in their client’s firms.

Columbia Business School alumni and up to four of their colleagues are eligible for a 25 percent tuition benefit for this program. More on the Alumni Tuition Benefit.