Contrary to the inherently digital internet companies, enterprises in traditional industries often find their original business model and value chain completely shattered in the internet era. For many enterprises, to venture into digital transformation is not about bringing along an upgrade and reproduce its success in the traditional market, but about surviving. To address concerns in this topic, this November, Fudan MBA Program invited Dr. George Westerman from MIT Sloan School of Management to deliver his course entitled “Leading Digital Transformation" to the Fudan International MBA students.
The Fudan International MBA Program was jointly launched 26 years ago by Fudan University School of Management (FDSM) and MIT Sloan School of Management, who have since been working together closely in curriculum development, business practice projects, second degrees, visiting scholars and alumni network sharing.
Recently, as part of the overall upgrade of MBA Program, the Fudan International MBA has introduced several popular elective courses from MIT Sloan School of Management, including “Data Analytic” by Professor Robert Freund, “Financial Innovation – An Analytical Perspective” by Professor Hui Chen, and “Entrepreneurial Strategy” by Dr. Erin L. Scott. This November, a whole new course “Leading Digital Transformation” was delivered to the Fudan IMBA students by Dr. George Westerman from MIT Sloan.
Through interactive lectures and case studies, the Fudan IMBA students have learned from best practices of digital transformation gathered by Dr. Westerman during his research and working with company executives since 2011, so as to better prepare themselves for leading companies to success in the fast-moving digital economy.
Achieve True Insights through Case Study
Many students have already dealt with digital transformation in some way. Zeng Chenghao, the IMBA students, Class of 2023 worked in the digitalization industry itself, so he well understands the technology part about this issue. He selected this course in hope of finding out more about how to leverage the combination of that technology and leadership so as to empower the organization. His classmate, Park Weon , from South Korea, told us that the digital transformation is currently happening in the company he works, and he wishes to follow this course and make sure that they are going on the right track. Shui Yutian is a product manager in an internet company, whose daily work involves digitalization, so she would like to gain a deeper understanding about it. And in the case of Former employee of one of the Chinese internet giants, Wang Fengyue sees clearly that the way to conduct digital transformation varies according to industry and evolves with the development of technology. And since MIT Sloan is at a leading position concerning researches on digital transformation, Wang hopes to learn about the latest professional insights best practices in this field from Dr. Westerman’s course.
“I'm impressed by how much the students have enriched the class discussions with their experience and insights,” said Dr. Westerman. “The students asked some interesting questions that I hadn't thought about. I’m also learning more about China and Asia — I've visited cities in China, but now I get to hear more about how business works here, and that's been very rewarding.”
“Transformation” is more important than “digital"
“It's important to remember that in the world of digital transformation, transformation is more important than digital,” Dr. Westerman emphasized.
He pointed out that in so many cases, companies carrying digital transformation tend to stop at buying or creating a lot of digital innovations, and acquiring a pretty and digital look on the outside, without integrating things in an efficient way.
Through his course, Dr. Westerman refers to these companies as “fashionistas”. “They spend a lot of money, and sometimes they even drive a lot of revenue, but they're doing it in a very unprofitable way, because underneath it's just very messy and not connected.”
He reminds the IMBA students that, what business leaders need to do is to realize that digital transformation is not buying the technology, but about changing the company.
Many Fudan IMBA students felt very inspired by this point of view. Weon said: “So far I thought technology comes first in this issue. I didn’t realize that every employee needs to be a part of the changing process so as to achieve true digital transformation.”
Shui realized that when a company purchases a software for its digitalization, it is actually buying the methodology of management to solve problems encountered in its operation, to reduce costs and increase efficiency.
“Thanks to the professor, I realized that the core of digital transformation is still management of the human factor,” said Hou Yukun, the IMBA student, Class of 2023. “We can’t just grab some technology or tool and believe it’ll work like a charm. The key of digital transformation lies in ‘transformation’, instead of ‘digital’; and its success relies on the coordination of everyone in the organization, which is the truly challenging part of this whole thing.”
Fast learning and constantly innovating
Dr. Westerman pointed out that it’s impossible to compare the design and realization of a digital system to that of a factory or a house. “In the digital world, you can't know what the thing should look like in advance and build it fast and cheap accordingly; because even if you have it right for now, it will change again. That's why we need to have this fast-learning, fast-experimentation process, where we can figure out the way things should be, and keep innovating that as customer preferences and situations change. Constantly build on what we have learned, rather than planning it all out in advance.”
Through Dr. Westerman’s lectures, Zeng believes he has learned a lot about the importance of corporate culture and how should leadership work in this culture to make digital transformation work effectively for the enterprise.
Wang used to believe that the digitalization is accomplished with the installation of the platforms and training of the employees. “Now I see clearly that the digital transformation has to be rooted in and evolve with the corporate culture for it to constantly improve the efficiency and benefit the company in the long term,” said Wang.
With the idea of entering the investment industry after graduation in mind, Zhu Zelan has realized through Dr. Westerman’s course that strong capabilities in digitization can be seen as a key competitive advantage of an enterprise, which should definitely be taken into consideration during his future investment decision making process.
“The mindset that I hope the students will walk away form this course with is that development of industries and technology never stops, which means companies need to be constantly innovating, constantly changing, to make sure they can do what the market needs from them,” said Dr. Westerman. Meanwhile, he reminded the Fudan IMBA students: “Leaders of the future world will need to have enough understanding of technology to know how it can drive changes in organizations, as well as the abilities to work with the technology experts to make those changes happen.”
