Do Digital Businesses Need Strategy?

Considering the constant change in technology and consumer preferences, it is less important for digital companies to focus their energy on defining strategy than it is for them to recognize when that strategy needs to be changed.

Find out more about the secret to digital companies’ success with Jeanne Ross, Faculty Director in the MIT Sloan School of Management Organizational Design for Digital Transformation online short course.

Transcript

Traditionally in large organizations, senior executives and their boards spend a lot of time defining strategy. And the success of the company depends a great deal on having a great strategy. Interestingly, in the digital world, strategy is less important. You should gasp now. Because traditionally, we didn’t think anything was more important than strategy, but the reality is in the digital economy, what we can do, what technologies make possible, what our customers want changes every day.

So our strategy is constantly evolving. Our success depends on being able to recognize when the existing strategy isn’t quite right and then pivoted to something that will really hum. That kind of thinking is what digital startups do and I would argue it is what every successful digital company will do.

So we want to focus on not how do you define the strategy, but rather how do you design yourself so that you can see these opportunities and then quickly deliver on them. Because that will be the thing that will trip you up. Most companies are designed to do what they do really, really well not to change really, really fast.