Join the MIT Industrial Liaison Program (ILP) this fall for our second digital transformation webinar series. In this series, we will continue to explore key digital transformation topics of corporate interest, including digital strategies, operational agility, customer experience, and new technologies.
The digital future is here, and the threat of disruption looms large. The COVID-19 crisis has contributed to this disruption and notably accelerated the transition to a digital future. In our current rapidly expanding digital marketplace, what does digital transformation mean for your company and your business model? How can you stay on top, and even ahead, of these rapid changes? What challenges will your company face, and how can you prepare to successfully tackle what’s ahead? Please join MIT ILP alongside MIT faculty [and startups] to discuss and address these key issues in facing our digital future.
Digital Transformation Webinar Series:
Geoffrey Parker is a professor of engineering at Dartmouth College where he also serves as Director of the Master of Engineering Management Program. In addition, he is a research fellow at MIT’s Initiative for the Digital Economy where he leads platform industry research studies and co-chairs the annual MIT Platform Strategy Summit. Prior to joining Dartmouth, Parker was a professor of business at Tulane University. He received a B.S.E. from Princeton and M.S. and Ph.D. from MIT. Parker has made significant contributions to the field of network economics and strategy as co-developer of the theory of “two-sided” markets. He is co-author of the book “Platform Revolution.” His current research includes studies of platform business strategy, data governance, smart cities and energy systems, financial services, and electronic healthcare record systems. Parker’s research has been funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, the Sloan Foundation, the states of Louisiana and New York, and numerous corporations. He serves or has served as department editor and associate editor at multiple journals and as a National Science Foundation panelist. Parker won the Thinkers50 2019 Digital Thinking Award, along with Marshall Van Alstyne, for the concepts of the inverted firm, two-sided markets, and how firms can adapt and thrive in a platform economy. In Spring 2020, he was elected as a Fellow of the Production and Operations Management Society. In Fall 2020 he joined the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Advanced Manufacturing and Production. Parker is a frequent keynote speaker and advises senior leaders on their organizations’ platform strategies. Before attending MIT, he held positions in engineering and finance at GE Semiconductor and GE Healthcare. Additional information can be found at ggparker.net, @g2parker, and Stern Strategy Group.
This talk will discuss the types of disruption driven by COVID 19 and the patters of business adaptation that have been observed across multiple industries. Those firms that made investments to create digital links across their organizations appear to have been more resilient in the face of disruption. The talk will also present evidence of differential impact across industries and will offer some conjecture as to the types of business models that appeared to be more resilient.
Research Scientist Center for Information Systems Research (CISR) MIT Sloan School of Management
Stephanie Woerner is a Research Scientist at the Center for Information Systems Research (CISR) at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Stephanie is an expert on how companies use technology and data to create more effective business models and her research centers on how companies manage organizational change caused by the digitization of the economy. In 2016, she was a subject matter expert on enterprise digitization for the Wall Street Journal CEO Council Conference. She has a passion for measuring hard-to-assess digital factors such as connectivity and customer experience, and linking them to firm performance. Recent articles (with Peter Weill) include "Thriving in an Increasingly Digital Ecosystem,” and “Is Your Company Ready for a Digital Future?”, in Sloan Management Review. Stephanie is the coauthor, with Peter, of What’s Your Digital Business Model? Six questions to help you build the next generation enterprise, (Harvard Business Review Press, 2018).
(Stephanie Woerner video stamps starts at 58.56)
High growth companies don’t go it alone. Increasingly, they are achieving results by creating and orchestrating digitally connected ecosystems — coordinated networks of enterprises, devices, and customers — that create value for all of their participants. In this talk, we will describe three different digital partnering strategies that we’ve identified and how each affects growth. We’ll go into depth on two important capabilities—digital readiness and curation — that companies need to develop in order to effectively digitally partner. The talk will be illustrated with case vignettes and survey data.