Digitisation is not Transformation: Introduction

Most digital transformations fail. According to Forbes magazine, some 70% do not reach their goals.

Last year, $1.3trn was spent on Digital Transformation. If we take the failure rate as a direct (if crude) equivalence to money lost, that’s some $900bn wasted.

If you take a superforecasting approach to figuring out the likely outcome, you start with the base rate - doing so shows you immediately that most digital transformations fail and yours most likely will too.

Yet CEO surveys consistently make the case for transformation. As does the UK’s former Chief of Defence Staff.

General Sir Nick Carter, speaking on 21 March last year about the necessity of innovation, adaptation, and modernisation offered a quotation widely (if wrongly) attributed to Darwin to make this case:

“It is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; the species that survives is the one that is able to best adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself.”

In the same speech, elaborating on this theme CDS noted that:

‘.… we’ve got some big questions to ask ourselves … about…the way we organise ourselves… …How we think about our operating model … that we need to reflect on as we seek to make this modernisation work.’

One finds this sentiment – that transformation is organisational design - everywhere.

Rob Murray, Head of NATO’s Innovation Unit does a great job of summarising all this succinctly writing last year that:

‘the nations that win…may be those with the most agile bureaucracy rather than those with the best technology’.

We’re undergoing our own Digital Transformation at Fujitsu, our CEO, Tokita San, has made clear that the future of Fujitsu is as a Digital Transformation company, helping our partners succeed on this journey.?I have recently written our 90-day report on what it takes to succeed, as we continue our own DX in Fujitsu Defence and National Security.

We think the CEO’s, CDS and Murray are right: MOD transformation is vital to ensure Britain ‘wins’ and secures maximal strategic advantage for the nation and our allies. It is non-discretionary for all of us.

What then can we all learn from the 70% of transformations that fail?

This is a LinkedIn series by Dr Keith Dear, Director of Artificial Intelligence Innovation at Fujitsu Defence. Follow to read the seven lessons this series will cover, on what we can learn from transformations that fail.