Break the Wall: Why and How to Democratize Digital in Your Business

by Zeynep Aksehirli, Yakov Bart, Kwong Chan, Koen Pauwels

Overview

Break the Wall: Why and How to Democratize Digital in your Business examines problems facing business units and top management adapting to digital transformation and offers solutions. Each department within a business has important, but distinct responsibilities, and very different speeds of digital transformation. Parts of an organisation that touch the outside world will often be first to sense a need. Their adaptive changes can then cascade up, and as this is implemented more widely the organization builds value and resilience.

The structure of this book is built upon real-world issues the authors encountered in their research and consultancy, with each chapter offering a specific solution. The new framework presented here was inspired by dozens of interviews with digital transformation experts and by an ecological model that aims to understand resilience in the biological world by looking at continuous and nesting adaptation cycles of ecosystems. This book forms part of the American Marketing Association (AMA) series

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781803821887
Publisher:	Emerald Publishing Limited
Publication date:	12/14/2022
Series:	American Marketing Association
Pages:	168
Product dimensions:	5.43(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.35(d)

About the Author

Zeynep Aksehirli is an Associate Professor of Management and Organizational Development. She has published various articles and books on corporate culture, and network structures.

Yakov Bart is an Associate Professor of Marketing, named as one of the world’s top 40 undergraduate business school professors.

Kwong Chan is an Academic Specialist who has published research across domains including Product Innovation, Advertising, Public Policy, Engineering and Marketing.

Koen Pauwels is Distinguished Professor, named a worldwide top 2% scientist. He has published 4 books and over 80 articles on marketing effectiveness. While writing this book, Koen was President of the American Marketing Association’s Academic Council.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Introduction to Seven big insights
Chapter 2. Frame Digital Transformation
Chapter 3. Set Your Goals
Chapter 4. Analyze the Gaps
Chapter 5. Wield the Sledgehammer
Chapter 6. Design the Open-floor Plan
Chapter 7. Implement to Avoid Pitfalls
Chapter 8. Learn from the Experiences of Others

Editorial Reviews

A rare work assembling the world's leading academics, professionals and thought leaders in confronting one of the great organizational challenges of today: how do we do anything with all of this data? Finally we have a title that can make the process of digital transformation real.

Neil Hoyne

Packed with pitfalls, stories, and straight talk perspectives from those on digital transformation journey, Break the Wall: Why and How to Democratize Digital in your Business is a fantastic handbook for today’s leaders. The real-world insights, from different industries, gives all of us the path to close the gap between the current and desired status of our own digital transformation and build long-term organizational resiliency.

Diana O’Brien

Definitely both a “why” and “how” book! Whether you’re just now considering a digital transformation or already halfway through one, Break the Wall will give you cause for pause, along with the insights you’ll need to ask the most useful questions, going forward.

Don Peppers

Finally, a book about digital transformation that provides a roadmap to overcome organizational obstacles and achieve the goals that so many companies aspire to. Break the Wall breaks the mold, with provocative insights by its all-star authors with a narrative that is so clear and compelling that leadership teams across the enterprise will be inspired to embrace and act upon.

Ed Keller

There is no escaping change. Your competitors are constantly changing, customers are evolving, and the economy is very dynamic. What is your organization's readiness to keep up with all of the changes? Are you ready to adapt quickly enough to stay ahead of them? One of the biggest changes within organizations over the past decade has been the digital transformation, assisted by technology and accelerated by the pandemic. Companies have been rapidly adapting, but more often than not the change supported by insights is not universal throughout the organization: some parts are moving faster than others. Break the Wall is an excellent read with clear guidelines on bringing the entire organization along to make it much more functional. If you are going through a digital transformation, this book is a must.

David J. Reibstein

"Digital Transformation" is probably one of the most popular business buzzwords these days, but the urgency of it is still real. At this point, most business leaders have a good sense of the "what" and the "why," especially because we see it every day in the leading brands who are capturing more of our spend. But the "how" can feel daunting. In "Break the Wall," the AMA does a masterful job of laying out why transformation is not just proclamations from the top and moving budgets around. It stems from a customer-first, data-first approach to looking at one's strategy. And when you do, it quickly becomes clear that removing the "walls" within most organizations, which were set up for an older vision of efficiency and control, becomes one of the most important accelerators of change. Whether it is linking data, bringing cross-functional teams together to improve customer journeys, speeding up time to market, or just bringing more diverse views together to drive innovation, breaking the walls must be a critical priority for the business — beyond getting the tools, hiring the data scientists, and enhancing one's design skills. But that's not easy. The AMA's book does a masterful job of providing practical examples — from large, small, B2C, B2B, and businesses across sectors — that can provide guideposts for how to think through one's own roadmap for change. Every leadership team realizing that their change efforts have stalled, or who are even just beginning, need to read this book, share their learning, and use that to pinpoint the walls to break and the techniques for doing so.

David Edelman

[Break the Wall] offers an insightful and timely guidance for achieving digital transformation in a post-Covid highly competitive market. The authors managed to create an encompassing framework that emphasizes the iterative-adaptation process that is critical to achieving organizational change in a fast-paced environment. Each chapter provides actionable nuggets, making the book a mirror for executives seeking to identify why existing efforts may not be as effective as expected.

Chris Leong

Break the Wall offers a clear, concise guide to successfully leading digital transformation. Importantly, this is as much about culture and organizational empowerment as it is technology and business strategy. The authors have studied a wide range of companies who have been through this journey and distilled their collective experience and wisdom into seven key insights that will give you a tremendous advantage in yours.

Scott Brinker

Every major company is going through digital transformation, yet most of these efforts lead to limited success. In their book Break the Wall, the authors provide a clear roadmap for successful digital transformation. Anyone engaged in this journey should read this book.

Sunil Gupta