Dealing with Digital Disruption
Aligning and transforming your business
Hosts: Anshuman Khare, Rod Schatz & Brian Stewart
DATE & TIME: May 26, 2017 from 9:30am – 12:00pm
VENUE: NABI – Campbell Facility, 200 Carnegie Drive, St. Albert AN T8N 5A7
SYMPOSIUM FEE: FREE!
REGISTRATION DEADLINE: May 19, 2017 (please email Anshuman.khare@fb.athabascau.ca) / Limited space.
WHO SHOULD ATTEND
Business executives interested in or struggling to define how to deal with the effects that digital technologies is having on their business. The Symposium would also be of interest to small business owners who can see the challenges and opportunities the digital revolution presents.
ABOUT THE SYMPOSIUM
The ability of digital technology to substantially alter how organisations operate has been amply evidenced over the past several decades. Digitisation is now moving beyond improving how organisations work, to challenging why organisations exist and what fundamental value they provide. This phenomenon of “digital disruption” is accelerating and becoming a real threat facing most organisations, forcing business leaders to gain a critical understanding of digital disruption to ensure organisational survival.
This Symposium reviews some of the characteristics of digital disruption. Listing existing barriers to exit and entry and recent industrial disruptions, we determine that low complexity industries with low levels of digitisation are likely to be the initial targets for disruption. In addition, digital disruption can be categorised into stages where initial sustaining productivity gains are subsequently undermined by continued digitisation that destabilises the pre-existing value proposition and thereby establishes a new product or service. These we term as first-order and second-order disruptions. The Symposium will conclude with a proposed model to assess digital disruptions, and while conceding that digital disruption is a disaggregated force with no clear unifying theory currently available, we build on existing business planning theories and tools to provide additional insights into potentially destabilising disruptions. The insights and tools presented will provide you with a greater ability to ready your organisation for disruption and to lead it through effecting transformational change.
SPEAKER BIOS
Rod Schatz is a Senior Executive with an Information Systems focus where he delivers business value to organizations using systems in unique and creative ways. Rod holds a Master of Science degree in geospatial technologies from the University of Alberta. More recently, Rod has specialized in implementing enterprise technologies to assist organizations with their journey into a truly digital world using effective information management and architecture techniques.
Rob Llewellyn is founder of the CXO Transform education platform and has spent twenty years helping firms generate commercial value from technology. While being called upon by the likes of DHL, SAP and Sage for help, he also works with hundreds of SME and small business owners who need practical advice and guidance on how to adopt digital to ensure their businesses thrive in the digital economy. After addressing executives from Scandinavia’s top 200 firms in Latvia this month, Rob will join us at the Symposium live from Spain.
SCHEDULE
9:30 am: Registration, Coffee and Networking
9:45 am: Introductory Remarks (10-15 min)
10:00 am: SESSION 1 (25 min includes 5 min Q&A)
Speaker: Rod Schatz
Topic: Business model transformation due to technology innovation
We live in dynamic times, where businesses and organizations are experiencing unprecedented disruption due to technological forces. This presentation will highlight cases studies of how technology has allowed unknown startup companies to disrupt entire industries and in some cases, lead to the bankruptcy of billion dollar organizations. The technological innovations that have enabled these young startups to disrupt industries relates to effective information management, cloud technologies, mobile innovations and social media marketing that are combined to create a digital first mind set. Will disruption hit your industry or organization? If you don’t think so reflect on these digital disruptors: Uber versus the Taxi industry; Airbnb versus the hospitality industry; X versus your business …
10:30 am: SESSION 2 (25 min includes 5 min Q&A) / Speaker from Spain via Skype
Speaker: Rob Llewellyn
Topic: Why many digital projects will neither disrupt markets nor protect against disruption
Leaders are increasingly coming to terms with the need to adopt digital to protect their businesses from the threat of disruption. This calls for the development of a new set of leadership skills, which are focused on transformation as opposed to operational excellence. While successfully executing digital business strategies remains a significant challenge for many firms, others are unknowingly investing in digital projects that will neither disrupt markets nor protect them against disruption. So while their executives have high hopes about what their digital investment will achieve, the reality is that many initiatives will simply create a better version of the past, instead of a new future, which will not be enough to survive and thrive in the years ahead.
11:00 am: Break – Coffee and Networking (10 min)
11:10 am: Panel Discussions (35 min) / Facilitators: Brian Stewart & Anshuman Khare
11:45 pm: Concluding remarks & feedback (10 min)