My previous writing has stressed the importance of building on a company’s strengths when adopting digital technology and responding to digital disruption. This means applying digital technology in ways that fit your business. It means companies without much high tech expertise generally should not embark upon expensive forays into direct competition with high tech powerhouses like Apple. Instead, companies should adopt technology in ways that support their business and its strategy. And, most of them should not strive to develop elaborate high tech capabilities rivaling those at places like Apple. Doing so just doesn’t fit the strategies of most companies.
To further emphasize the importance of appropriately integrating digital technology into a business, I’ll point out what prominent technology expert and investor Esther Dyson said In the most recent issue (First Quarter 2014) of Directors and Boards, where her comments were along similar lines to what I have been saying. And, Dyson stated it very well, distinctly communicating that digital is not a strategy. The Directors and Boards article was titled “Esther Dyson on digital advisory boards: ‘Pay attention to what they say’”, and in it Dyson said:
        “…you should be looking for how to use digital to implement a strategy, rather than digital as a strategy…”
Dyson goes on to explain that digital will eventually take hold in virtually all companies, much like telephones have been universally adopted. On this, Dyson said:
        “But in the end, all companies will be digital, just as all companies are telephone-based.”
A related point not specifically stated by Dyson is that although virtually all businesses have used telephones, only a smaller number of firms are actually in the telecommunications business, e.g., as telecommunications equipment producers or as telephone companies providing telecommunications networks. The vast majority of companies have used telephones to support their business, not to be in the telecommunications business.
Paralleling Dyson’s example about telephones, my previous writing used the example of PCs (personal computers). As I said before, pretty much all companies have used PCs to support their business, but few have gone into the computer hardware business competing with PC producers.
So whether what’s new in high tech is telephones, PCs, or the latest digital technology, most companies should adopt the technology in ways that support their business, not as a daunting attempt to transform their company into one that competes directly with the high tech Apples of the world. Even companies facing potential disruption should move forward with technology in ways that fit and support their business and its strategy. Why? Because digital is not a strategy—digital supports strategy.
