Thriving in an Increasingly Digital Ecosystem
Thriving in an Increasingly Digital Ecosystem
sloanreview.mit.edu
26-33 minutes
Topics
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Given the amount of turmoil digital disruption is causing, it’s time for
companies to evaluate these threats and opportunities and start
creating new business options for the future — the more-connected
future of digital ecosystems. Board members at large companies
agree. In recent research by the MIT Center for Information
Systems Research, board members estimated that 32% of their
company’s revenue would be under threat from digital disruption in
the next five years; 60% of board members felt their boards should
spend significantly more time on this issue next year.2 Among the
disrupters board members worried about the most were Uber
(disrupting taxis); Airbnb (disrupting hotels); Apple Pay, Kabbage,
Venmo and others (disrupting banks); and Amazon (disrupting
booksellers and retailers of many other products).
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about its products: where they come from, where they are in the
store and when they are sold. However, it doesn’t always know who
its customers are and why they are buying what they are buying.
But digitization enables consumers and companies to seek out a
wider array of benefits. The ecosystem for Amazon.com Inc., for
example, offers greater customer choice and enables faster
innovation. The enhanced consumer value comes from having
different vendors selling similar (or even identical) products — often
at different prices or service levels — and fast feedback that allows
vendors to improve their products and services. Consumers get a
one-stop Amazon-managed experience with greater choice and
with more information about prices and quality. Amazon gets to see
the data on all of the activity in its ecosystem, enabling fine-tuning
and identification of new opportunities while it extracts rents from
the ecosystem.
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smartphone app that helps customers achieve that goal. Users can
point their phone at houses they are interested in to review their
sale price history as well as similar information about homes
nearby. Users of the app thus become better informed about prices
in their target areas — and a hot source of mortgage leads for CBA.
Historically, those who get mortgages become long-term bank
customers — the best kind. Using the app, consumers made more
than 1.2 million property searches in the first six months after
deployment, and CBA estimated the app’s return on investment to
be 109%.5
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Aetna Inc., the $47 billion managed health care company that
serves both individuals and employers, is attempting to become a
health care destination. In addition to being part of 17 public health
exchanges, Aetna aims to be the company consumers turn to for
more and more of their health and lifestyle needs. This means
moving from being primarily business-to-business (managing
companies’ health plans) to business-to-business and business-to-
consumer (managing companies’ health care plans and interacting
with consumers directly) and business-to-consumer (selling directly
to consumers), while continuing to learn about the lifestyle needs of
end customers. Aetna is increasingly focusing on a multiproduct
and multiservice customer experience that integrates its own
products with those of third parties — for example, wellness and
health coaches, and smartphone apps such as iTriage, which lets
users check their symptoms, get information on medications and
find nearby hospitals.
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What’s Next?
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To avoid this outcome, we suggest that you take the initiative now.
Work with a group of colleagues and customers across your
respective businesses to assess your business, and then share the
results with each other. If you have multiple businesses, repeat this
exercise for each of your major products and services. When the
threat is serious, we recommend reviewing efforts to buy strategic
business options for the future. Are your current efforts sufficient?
As you ponder how a digital future will change your business, it’s
worth remembering the words of computer visionary Alan Kay: “The
best way to predict the future is to invent it.”10
Topics
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References (10)
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