Imaging a Digital Strategy starting from TRUST

The purpose of this post is to set out the logic and background thinking to help create a digital strategy based on the concept of consumer TRUST. By the end you should have a framework to debate internal assumptions and hurdles which may be preventing your organisation from realising a transformation to digital thinking.

A post exploring the consumer TRUST and why they matter is linked here. If your not sure about the types of consumer trust that exist, please do read that one first.

This post starts out by looking at the strategic options which have dominated management thinking for over 50 years and how they are challenged by platforms and Data; including Big Data. It considers what happens if companies maintain existing strategies and styles, since these dominant forces (strategy and style) have path dependency (as in the economic definition). There is a recognition that the pressure of short term reporting and financial planning, with linear models, leads to a lack of appetite to focus on exponential ideals due to perceived risk but how these current limitations may ultimately lead to decline.

Whilst an obvious solution would be to recreate an organisation, such an overly simplistic view ignores the complexity of the company, the people, its processes and other pressures. Therefore the final part of the paper considers the technology adoption curve and the adoption of many processes which can create agility where required. Amazon is highlighted as an example and how they are creating a new organisation fit for modern markets based on rethinking innovation and processes.

Strategic Options: the classic competitive strategy

Consider a classic two by two box matrix, label one axis something that is critical to your success and plot on the other other axis how your competitor (real or perceived) performs on the same metric, this is imaged in chart 1 below.

1. Where both you and your competitor have low competency (bottom left), therefore questioning if there is actually a market. This could be innovation on a path to utility or a market in decline, however the focus is not on this square, if it were the boston matrix — this is the dog or question mark.
2. (B1 and B2) Where either you or your competitor has high competency and the other is low, this is where the application of strategies apply to win/ dominate are utilised. Depending…