Making Digital Matter – Let’s start with participate! by Ken Russell
It’s great to see discussions, conversations and questions regarding Digital Transformation
beginning to emerge! The past few years or so, it’s been top of mind with so many of the folks I’ve been around and I’ve talked with – not just in Silicon Valley, or the Silicon Prairie, or even the Research Triangle. Everywhere!
I’ve heard people talking about Digital Transformation in grocery stores, at the football game, even at the home improvement stores on sleepy Saturday mornings.
Digital Transformation has been THE hot issue with hobbyists, students – even my Aunt Grace’s garden club!
Really?
Absolutely – nearly every aspect of our lives over the past 10 years have been transformed (meaning: changed permanently) by the integration of some type of technology:
· Self check out in the grocery stores
· Apps on our mobile phones that help us participate in stadium-wide surveys and games at sporting events
· Frequent shopper affinity cards that make it easier for me to return the extra 10 sheets of plywood I didn’t really need
· The ability, not just to connect with other gamers out there, but to compete virtually. To measure, learn and gain skills & insight that can be readily transferred
· A digital helping hand to let my Aunt know when it’s time to water her geraniums – or, when she may be watering them too much!
It’s just that we haven’t necessarily called it Digital Transformation, have we? I’d imagine all of us would say we haven’t really thought of ourselves as transforming all of this time, we’ve just been living life! No, often the subtleties of transformation are hard to notice as they’re happening – that’s usually a key indicator of transformation and not merely change, by the way. Transformation is more permanent and enduring. Change – well, not so much. We’ll address that a bit more in a future post, I’m sure!
It can be hard to define Digital Transformation. But is it really one of those you’ll know when you see it kinds of things? Looking back on the rapid growth and pervasiveness of the iPhone and the App Store, for example – did everyone notice when we (as consumers) kind of stopped caring about what kind of chip we had in our devices (Pentium, anyone?) or how many megs we had in our hard drives, or how much more RAM my new PC had than yours?
Nope – at some point, it became all about the applications! Could my device handle Yelp, could I get all my email remotely? And - could I swipe my smartphone a few times and have a car come pick me up and take me wherever I wanted?
That last one is a bit more recent, isn’t it? But assuredly transformative!
Defining Digital Transformation doesn’t have to be difficult or confounding – we just have to look around and participate!
· It’s how we consume our technology, not just how we create it
· It’s that we leverage our data nowadays, not just administer it
· It’s in our collisions - our unexpected “aha” moments of discovery
· It’s in what we share, not just in what we know
It’s in our everyday - just living life!
Kenneth E Russell, PhD
VP, Digital Transformation & Chief Information Officer
Pfeiffer University
The Pfeiffer University Center for Digital Transformation
Ken is a closing keynote speaker at NCTA’s State of Tech Conference coming up this May 5 in Durham. He will speak on Making Digital Matter – Communities, Collaboration & The Next Generation CIO
