Last week, I had an insightful meeting in Chennai with a Dutch technology solutions provider specialising in Business Process Management (BPM), digital consulting, and AI & data-driven platforms. The conversation revolved around how European firms with strong domain expertise can meaningfully contribute to India’s digital transformation journey.
On my return, I happened to listen to the audiobook Designed for Digital: How to Architect Your Business for Sustained Success by Jeanne Ross, Cynthia Beath, and Martin Mocker. The timing couldn’t have been better. The book helped crystallize many of the themes I’ve been reflecting on—how technology, architecture, and business design come together to shape scalable digital success.
In this post, I’m sharing a thematic summary of the book, tailored for digital leaders—whether you’re a buyer, a builder, or a channel partner. It’s meant for those working at the intersection of customer value, platform strategy, and digital solution delivery. The summary captures the core themes, key frameworks, and real-world case studies from firms like LEGO, DBS Bank, Philips, Toyota, and Schneider Electric.
Digital Business Design: Why It Matters
In the digital era, companies must redesign their entire business—people, processes, and technology—to deliver digital offerings that create new customer value beyond traditional products or services. Simply adopting technology is insufficient; the business must be architected for ongoing digital innovation.
Key Points:
- Digital technologies (SMACIT: Social, Mobile, Analytics, Cloud, IoT) enable new, data-rich customer experiences and business models.
- Leading companies continuously synchronize their organizational elements to quickly innovate and deliver new digital value propositions.
- Digital business design is a continuous journey, not a fixed structure or IT initiative.
Best Practices and Case Studies:
- Amazon exemplifies a company designed for digital through continuous experimentation, rapid iteration, and empowered teams owning the end-to-end customer experience.
- Philips transformed its healthcare business by redesigning processes and technology to deliver integrated digital health offerings paired with an explicit customer-centric vision.
Building and Leveraging Shared Customer Insights
Understanding deeply what customers want—even beyond what customers can articulate—is foundational to successful digital offerings. Organizations must build mechanisms for continuous experimentation and co-creation with customers.
Key Points:
- Digital offerings are discovered via iterative testing aligning what technology enables and what customers will pay for.
- Shared customer insights require breaking down silos and sharing learnings enterprise-wide.
- Customer journeys and co-creation workshops accelerate refining value propositions.
Best Practices and Case Studies:
- Schneider Electric created a “Digital Services Factory” to coordinate experiments and rapidly scale successful digital services, overcoming fragmentation in its large business.
- DBS Bank uses hackathons, customer journey mapping, and crowdsourcing to constantly learn and innovate new digital banking services.
- Toyota Motor North America stimulates grassroots innovation with internal labs and “hackathons” focused on customer needs.
Establishing a Robust Operational Backbone
A digital business requires a reliable and scalable infrastructure—the operational backbone—that integrates key business processes, systems, and data across the company
Key Points:
- The operational backbone focuses on digitising core processes to ensure efficiency, reliability, and consistency.
- It is a prerequisite for scaling digital innovation and enables agility by stabilizing transactional operations.
- Reducing business and product complexity speeds backbone implementation.
Best Practices and Case Studies:
- LEGO radically streamlined its operations and supply chain by standardising processes and trimming complexity, enabling rapid innovation and growth.
- CEMEX and Kaiser Permanente transformed core processes with ERP and integrated systems to support multi-unit operations and customer service consistency.
- Schneider Electric accelerated backbone development by rationalizing IT and leveraging cloud-based platforms.
Developing a Flexible and Scalable Digital Platform
A digital platform composed of reusable software components allows for rapid and modular development of new digital offerings, enabling companies to innovate faster and scale efficiently
Key Points:
- Unlike the operational backbone, the digital platform emphasizes modularity, reuse, and quick configuration of customer-facing capabilities.
- API enablement is central: modular components communicate via APIs allowing flexible assembly of offerings.
- Digital platforms evolve continually through incremental component addition and refinement.
Best Practices and Case Studies:
- Toyota Connected’s Mobility Platform enables quick deployment of offerings like car-sharing by reusing components such as vehicle tracking and payment.
- DBS Bank developed modular digital services and consolidated multiple sub-platforms for better reuse and faster rollout.
- Northwestern Mutual accelerated digital transformation by acquiring a startup with a mature digital platform and integrating it.
Creating an Accountability Framework to Empower and Align
Success in digital requires empowered team owning “living assets” (software components or digital offerings) with clear accountability and autonomy balanced by alignment with enterprise goals.
Key Points:
- Component owners act as “mini-CEOs” responsible for continuous enhancement and financial performance.
- Agile, cross-functional teams with clear missions, metrics, and collaboration mechanisms replace rigid hierarchical controls.
- Accountability frameworks evolve as organizations learn and scale.
Best Practices and Case Studies:
- Spotify famously divides product development into autonomous, mission-driven squads with clear ownership and cross-team coordination via chapters and guilds.
- CarMax organized digital product teams empowered to experiment rapidly with customer feedback and aligned through transparent metrics.
- Schneider Electric faces challenges in scaling accountability across diverse businesses but invests in a governance framework aligned with digital ambitions.
Building an External Developer Platform (ExDP) and Ecosystems
To fully leverage digital innovation, companies can expose key platform components to external developers and partners via external developer platforms, creating ecosystems that multiply value and rapid innovation.
Key Points:
- ExDPs provide secure APIs, developer portals, and tools for partners to build upon the company’s digital platform.
- Ecosystem strategies generate network effects but require mature internal platform capabilities and thoughtful governance.
- Start small and experiment with partner innovation before scaling.
Best Practices and Case Studies:
- DBS Bank launched a large ExDP exposing hundreds of APIs to partners, supporting rapid development of complementary services.
- Uber leverages an ExDP for partners like Payfare to enhance driver offerings, while learning through experimentation and sometimes pruning unprofitable services.
- Philips and Schneider Electric are building industry platforms exposing infrastructure components and enabling third-party health and energy solutions.
Planning a Balanced and Adaptive Digital Transformation Roadmap
Digital transformation is a long, iterative journey requiring a practical roadmap balancing investment and focus among the five building blocks: Customer Insights, Operational Backbone, Digital Platform, Accountability Framework, and External Developer Platform.
Key Points:
- There is no one-size-fits-all roadmap; companies vary in maturity, industries, and visions.
- Many start with strengthening the operational backbone and customer insights, then build digital platform and accountability, deferring external platform development.
- Transformations require adaptive management, sustained leadership commitment, and graceful handling of incremental progress.
Best Practices and Case Studies:
- Principal International Chile prioritized operational backbone and accountability before maturing digital platform and delaying ExDP deployment.
- Schneider Electric sequentially developed backbone, shared insights, platform, accountability, and started external platform cautiously.
- Royal Philips similarly built capabilities progressively, focusing initially on operational efficiency and customer insights before scaling external partnerships.
- DBS Bank concurrently evolves multiple building blocks with executive sponsorship and strong employee engagement.
Leading Digital Transformation with Vision and Culture
Leadership must champion the art of digital desig: aligning vision, metrics, culture, and organizational design to brave the complexity of constant change and uncertainty.
Key Points:
- Digital transformation is driven by bold customer-centered visions and inspiring metrics (e.g., Philips’ goal to improve health outcomes for billions).
- Culture change is vital: fostering agility, collaboration, empowered accountability, and a tolerance for rapid experimentation and failure.
- Technology investments must be paired with organizational redesign; technology alone cannot deliver digital success.
Best Practices and Case Studies:
- Philips’ leadership invests heavily in employee training, cross-functional collaboration, and continuous redefinition of organizational roles.
- DBS Bank holds executives accountable for transformation progress, enabling teams with coaching and resources.
- Amazon epitomizes continuous innovation with fearless experimentation embedded in its culture.
Summary Table: Key Themes and Representative Companies
| Theme | Focus Area | Representative Companies | Highlights |
|---|---|---|---|
| Digital Business Design | Synchronization of people, process, technology | Amazon, Philips | Continuous alignment for new digital value |
| Shared Customer Insights | Customer co-creation and continuous testing | Schneider Electric, DBS Bank | Digital Services Factory, hackathons, journey maps |
| Operational Backbone | Process standardization and integration | LEGO, CEMEX, Kaiser Permanente | Reliable, scalable enterprise backbone |
| Digital Platform | Modular, reusable components, APIs | Toyota Connected, DBS Bank | Mobility platform, consolidated digital services |
| Accountability Framework | Empowerment and alignment of teams | Spotify, CarMax | Autonomous squads, metrics, agile governance |
| External Developer Platform | Ecosystem enablement via APIs | DBS Bank, Uber, Philips, Schneider | Partner APIs, developer portals, industry platforms |
| Transformation Roadmap | Balanced sequencing and continuous adaptation | Principal Chile, Schneider, Philips, DBS | Tailored journeys, investment focus |
| Leadership & Culture | Vision, metrics, cultural change | Philips, DBS, Amazon | Engaging passion, training, tolerance for change |
Final Note
Designed for Digital offers a systematic, practice-based guide for transforming complex, established organizations into digital enterprises. Drawing from real-world cases in multiple industries, the book delivers a pragmatic blueprint: don’t chase technology for its own sake or copy digital natives structurally—instead, commit to redesigning your people, processes, and platforms for customer-focused, continual digital innovation.
