Digital Dawn

The Digital Cognizance Enables Business to Strike the Right Digital Balance at the Transformation Journey with Focus. 

We are at the age of digital dawn; companies that can proactively and effectively build core digital capabilities based on digital cognizance to adapt to digital normality, will gain unique competitive advantage and execute with speed. Here are a few concepts to improve your digital cognizance.

Digital literacy: Wikipedia defines digital literacy as the ability to effectively and critically navigate, evaluate and create information using a range of digital technologies. It requires one "to recognize and use that power, to manipulate and transform digital media, to distribute pervasively, and to easily adapt them to new forms". Digital literacy does not replace traditional forms of literacy. It builds upon the foundation of traditional forms of literacy. it is much more than a combination of the two terms. Digital information is a symbolic representation of data, and literacy refers to the ability to read for knowledge, write coherently, and think critically about the written word.

At an enterprise level, digital literacy requires cross-functional collaboration and interdisciplinary knowledge sharing. It requires information management capabilities, innovation capabilities, and business learning & growth capabilities., etc. Just like digital consumers, Enterprise can also be classified into digital natives and digital immigrants. Digital native business is the one which is founded in the digital age, such as many technology startups; while a digital immigrant organization refers to the businesses which adopt technology later in the business life-cycle. Though simply being a digitally native company does not make business digital literate or digital mature. And many legacy businesses and industries are leveraging the two speeds-both industrial speed and digital speed in navigating digital transformation.

 Digital Mind Shift: Digital Transformation requires a mind shift. In addition to the set point changing, transformation requires first shifting mindsets, then building new skills, reinforcing and embedding new practices/reflexes, skills and situations have become more subtle, more multi-layered and, therefore, complex, what's needed every now and then to any individual, team, organization, society, and on up to the entire planet's population, is a little or a lot of energy to re-focus, kick start or 'game-changeing' With evolutionary digital technologies, the scientific breakthroughs connected to human communication dynamics regarding, for instance, mirror neurons, the social brain, the nature of consciousness are all wonderful, useful and interesting in driving transformation.

Digital Transformation: The terms "transformation" and "change" truly overlap in the literal definition; people tend, though, to carry their own associations with each. Transformation is definitely the more ambitious sounding term -- and thus, we attempt to characterize the differences. Organizations’ digitalization is surely a transformation journey, as it has to permeate into business vision, strategy, culture, and communication, processes. etc. Daily business change may be mechanical, but the transformation is more radical. "Change" can be a somewhat mechanical implementation of new or different ways to doing something while the digital transformation is more likely to be a sweeping approach to altering a culture, or parts of it, possibly even to parts of its value system, to embrace such as change and help it become self-perpetuating. That said, it is referring to modification and internalization of new values, behaviors, and culture. When the need for significant change is identified, it's generally naive to think it will succeed without transformation as well. Going digital is a transformation journey, as it takes holistic strategy, the culture of innovation & learning, solid business capabilities, and productive digital workforces., etc.

Digital Inflection Points 

More organizations are also at the strategic inflection point of digital transformation. A strategic inflection point is a time in the life cycle of a business when its fundamentals (Talent skills, process, and technologies) are about to change. Inflection is a bend, a fold, a curve, a turn, a twist; such change can mean an opportunity to rise to new heights, or a risk to hit the uncertainty. But it may just as likely signal the beginning of the end.

Digitalization implies the full-scale changes in the way business is conducted so that simply adopting new digital technology may be insufficient. You have to transform the company's underlying functions and organization as a whole with adjusted digital speed. Otherwise, companies may begin a decline from its previous good performance. But inflection point is the moment when the way business is being conducted changes more radically, it creates new opportunities for businesses that adept at executing and operation. It is the moment to be ‘paranoid’-as it’s the act of inflecting or the state of being inflected. By gaining more digital cognizance, the business can build solid understanding upon digital transformation and strike the right digital balance on the digital journey.