This week’s readings were insightful and got me thinking a lot about how the subject matter pertains to my line of work, as a participant in the “digital business transformation” journey of engineering and manufacturing companies. This is a slightly different wording than “digital disruption”, and it immediately left me wondering, are they different concepts? I was pleased to discover that Gartner provides a glossary of terms and behold, they provide definitions for both.
Digital Business Transformation is the process of exploiting digital technologies and supporting capabilities to create a robust new digital business model.
Digital Disruption is an effect that changes the fundamental expectations and behaviors in a culture, market, industry or process that is caused by, or expressed through, digital capabilities, channels or assets.
OK, so a key difference between the two is process vs. effect but I’m still not satisfied that I fully understand. Google to the rescue…
In the article Digital Disruptions vs. Digital Transformation and What it means for the Future of Hotels (Morch 2022), I found what I was looking for:
Digital disruptions are an outside-in process while digital transformation is an inside-out process.
And here we have a key differentiator…control. Now when I re-read the Gartner definitions, I can see it. Digital business transformation is an intention-based activity (“exploit”, “create”) while digital disruption is something that forces a response (“changes”, “caused by”). The former is much more controlled than the latter, yet both are opportunities for improvement.
With these definitions in mind, I found the Gartner article Digital Disruption and Innovation Primer for 2019 (Colella et al, 2019) to be confusing because it introduces the concept of Willful Disruption, complete with a fancy graphic:
It seems that this form of disruption is distinguished by…intent. So how is this now different from Digital Transformation? It doesn’t appear to be at all. What is the point of a glossary if not to prevent conflation of terms?
In doing my online research, I came across an interesting quote by Joseph Schumpeter, a 20th century political economist: “Economic progress, in capitalist society, means turmoil.” Mr. Schumpeter lived in a time before anything digital would have existed, but it seems to me that in context, turmoil and disruption are the same, and the point is that destruction and rebirth are essential to the evolutionary process, controlled, intended, or otherwise.
One of the more interesting discoveries for me this week was Gartner’s Digital Disruption Scale. This seems like a sound approach to assess and prioritize the impact of digital disruptions and cut through the noise of what is merely trendy or marketed at the time. Modeling it after naturally occurring “turmoil” events such as tornado, earthquake, and hurricane scales certainly seems appropriate.
I found the distinction between digital transformation, digital disruption, and innovation in the Gartner articles fascinating as well! I really love how you’ve distinguished between the transformation and disruption concepts using the words “exploit/create” vs “changes/ caused by”. One of the quotes that I found most helpful from the Gartner readings was something along the lines of: One companies innovation [transformation] is another’s disruption. I thought this did a great job of explaining the outside in vs. inside out concept that you found in your research. It also really plays into that quote you have from Schumpter!
I frequently find myself thinking about the prospect of great change when we are in the middle of what seems like chaos. I also believe that chaos breeds improvements because in the long run, we will go out of our way to make sure that we feel that chaos as little as possible. Companies do the same, as I imagine they would rather innovate than feel the disruption of another’s innovations.