Innovation Brief · IB-2025-04a · April 2025
The First Step in Business Transformation Is Your Mindset
The digital revolution was mostly reformation. AI offers a second chance at genuine transformation — but only for organisations that change how they think first.
- Authors
Dave WrightChief Innovation Officer
Brian SolisHead of Global Innovation
Alexis WalkerThought Leadership Manager
- Length
- 13 pages
- Themes
- Business Reinvention, AI Strategy & Maturity, The Actualized Enterprise
Summary
- For most companies, the digital revolution was actually reformation — less digital transformation and more digitization. They digitized their enterprises to make them faster and better, but they did not reinvent them.
- During the digital era, innovative companies stood out because they unlocked new opportunities through digital to transform their business models and reimagine their industries.
- The AI revolution introduces the next opportunity to deliver on the promise of transformation. AI's limitless potential is poised to enable even more profound business transformation.
- Some companies will repeat the past, treating AI like they did digital, resulting in more reformation efforts instead of transformative initiatives.
- To meet this moment, companies should adopt a transformation mindset focused on reinvention and innovation.
- Those who embrace business transformation will be at the forefront of redefining business in an AI era.
From the brief
Remember the excitement when digital cloud solutions were gaining momentum and promising to transform businesses from top to bottom? The embrace of new digital solutions and the movement of legacy workloads promised the radical improvement of performance and reach.
Fast forward to today and that digital revolution isn't looking so revolutionary. Instead of digitally transforming, most enterprises digitized the processes they already had. The AI era now poses the same question again — and this time the cost of answering it with a digital mindset is far higher.
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