From Analogue to Digital
A special about businesses that are successfully undergoing digital transformation
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Everyone in my (extended) family is watching Netflix. Yours too, I bet. The global video streaming service is in 190 countries and growing even faster than analysts expected. It expects to soon surpass the 100 million subscribers mark.
It's easy to forget: Netflix started off as an analogue business. It was renting out DVDs by mail. Its newfound world dominance was only made possible by going wholeheartedly digital. It would not be in your home now if it was still peddling discs. Netflix has smartly anticipated the impact of technology, and ridden the wave before others. Now that it's connected your TV and your other devices, its challenge is to stay relevant to your viewing needs. Hence its big foray into original (and local) content.
Photo Credit: Brian Cantoni / Flickr
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Which technology wave will drive your industry? Can you ride it ahead of your competitors? Or are you too wedded to business-as-usual and business-as-before?
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Lego teaches your kids to code
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Wait, Lego? Those colourful bricks we played with as children? Digital? Lego is a decades-old toymaker originating in Denmark. In its earlier years, children were very happy just to put the bricks together in interesting ways. But in the era of smartphones and apps, can plastic bricks compete? They sure can.
Lego is leading the way in creating physical-digital hybrid toys. It has released video games that depict creatures made from the bricks. It has just announced a set of robots that young children can build and then actually program to dance or play music using intuitive commands from an associated app. A brilliant introduction to the power of coding for young minds.
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Lego puts it well: "Anywhere the children want to be, we have to be as well." How ready is your business to move with changing tastes? There's a hybrid business model waiting for you, if only you have the imagination to see it.
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Maybe robots will be eating digital pizza, but we humans still need the real thing. Everyone loves pizza, but few of us would see it as a digital business. Consider this: Domino's is now thought to be one of the top 5 e-commerce sites in the world, with more than half of its orders now coming digitally. You order and pay and track your delivery on a personalised app; you can even order by emoji. Domino's also expects to be the first to implement widespread drone deliveries. The stock has climbed from $9 in 2010 to $160 now.
But none of this would have happened if Domino's had not addressed the heart of its business: the pizzas, and their taste. CEO Patrick Doyle admitted the pizzas tasted terrible in 2010, and revamped the recipes and cooking processes. All the digital add-ons only matter if the customer wants your product, no matter how convenient to order and receive.
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It's a great playbook: make sure the heart of your proposition (the taste, in this case) is great; then work with all the digital add-ons that deliver convenience and improve efficiency. Try it for your business.
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