Digital DNA And Archetypes
This article is written by Jeremiah Uke, a Contributor Author at Startup Istanbul.
Hans Van Grieken is the EMEA (Europe, the Middle East, and Africa) Technology Research & Insights Leader within Deloitte’s global CIO programme. In this role, he helps shape Deloitte’s global research agenda in addition to identifying & driving a small number of EMEA research initiatives. He was present at Startup Istanbul 016 where he delivered a keynote speech on Digital DNA, Digital Transformation and Innovation.
During his session at Startup Istanbul, Hans Van Grieken showed the audience the strengths of digitally enabled organizations, as well as ordering them to draw up 4 different archetypes and the percentage of digitally enabled companies belonging to each archetype, they are:
Laggers – 23%
Chasers – 26%
Fast Moving Experimenters – 21%
Talent and Strategy leaders – 30%
Laggers do not do anything wrong and are completely oblivious of what to do. Chasers, on the other hand, are every consulting firm’s dream, they do everything wrong but spend a lot of money at that. The fast-moving experimenters are corporate-like $10 million organizations that do fast experimentation, what makes their configuration of the DNA of 13 elements, all the classes of archetypes have the same DNA but with different configurations, which goes a long way to determine their growth and success. The fast-moving experimenters are good in experimentation, they are also very good in leadership.
The fourth archetype is the talent and strategy Leaders, they invest heavily in the talent of people they have, they also acquire new talent and are very concerned with keeping to the long-term strategy, everything starts from a strategic plan. These four different archetypes when summed up, have a big risk, once you have established yourself as a $10 million scale-up, there’s always the risk of monetizing what you have, and experimenting.
On the other hand, when you keep all the startup culture in a company of 500+ people, it is not going to work, because you need to manage it like a company, this is one of the major challenges of startups who reach the level of scale-ups.
Fast moving experimenters carry out business initiatives that are successful 84% of the time, talent and strategy leaders are successful 71% of the time, Chasers have a 28% rate, while Laggers have 29%.
Fast moving experimenters and talent and strategy leaders believe they need a digital strategy more often than the other archetypes do, this digital strategy needs to be integrated into the business strategy of the $10 million+ company.
For a number of big organizations, it is difficult to apply digital technology, B2B startups that have found the right configuration can leverage on this, and make money by helping big organizations identify the unknown opportunities, and deliver digital technologies that fit their current DNA, to move into a new world.
Like in your body, you cannot change your DNA, but you can find partners and interactions that will change your DNA, take the time to define your current and future digital DNA, even if you are just a startup now. If you are in the business to business model as a startup, try and understand the digital DNA of your customers, it will dramatically increase your success.
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