The slowdown in digital transformation progress is noted in a report from Gartner, looking at 2020 and 2021, and titled “Gartner Top Strategic Predictions for 2020 and Beyond.”
The report assesses that big companies will struggle with various forms of digital innovation, reflecting the challenges of technology modernization. Often unaccounted for, Gartner noted, are the relatively high costs associated with simplifying operational interdependence. One of the reasons for this falls with legacy technology, which often proves far more difficult to disentangle from the corporation and be replaced with new digital technology capable of delivering the required business goals.
In contrast, while the digital transformation ambitions big organizations are likely to be hampered, space will open up for smaller, more agile organizations, including many start-ups, who will have new opportunities to bring new innovations to market far faster than larger organizations.
Commenting on this state of affairs, CMSWire contributor Lisa Loftis notes in the longer-term this might work out for the big players, by letting smaller firms take chances when innovating new products (and living or dying by the success or failure of the outcome), and the scooping up the start-ups through acquisition or merger.
Mark Campbell, chief innovation officer at Trace3 refers to this process as ‘outovation’ and goes as far to state that some large firms are deliberately scaling back on their internal research and development programs so that smaller companies can take the technological risks, recognizing that emergent firms have a greater dynamic and ability to get new digital products into the public domain faster.
