Digital Vortex: How Today's Market Leaders Can Beat Disruptive Competitors at Their Own Game

WINNER OF THE 2017 AXIOM BEST BUSINESS BOOK AWARD

"Digital disruption" sounds like another business buzzword--until it happens to your company. Seemingly out of nowhere, startups and other tech-savvy disruptors attack. Your customers bolt for the door and revenues stall. Senior executives ignore the problem, or turn to yesterday's management playbook. In months instead of years, you've gone from market leader to also-ran.

This scenario is beginning to play out in every industry. Everything that can be digitized--from products and services to the entire value chain--is being digitized, to the advantage of companies that can harness disruption. Unfortunately, few companies are building the organizational capabilities and strategic responses to compete in this stark new reality.

In Digital Vortex, you will learn how to use the business models and strategies of startups to your own advantage. Instead of waiting to be disrupted, you can maximize the value of your existing businesses and move into profitable new ones. Most importantly, you will learn how to build the agility to anticipate threats, sense opportunities, and seize them before your rivals do.

In today's world there are two paths: navigating to a new digital future, or being engulfed by exponential competitive change. With recommendations backed by research with thousands of senior executives from market leaders and startups alike, this book gives you a compass to chart your own course--to compete with disruptors and win.

Michael Wade is the Cisco Chair in Digital Business Transformation and Professor of Innovation and Strategy at IMD, a Swiss-based business school focusing on executive education. He is the Director of the Global Center for Digital Business Transformation, an IMD and Cisco initiative. Michael has more than 50 articles and presentations to his credit in leading academic journals and conferences and has written seven books and more than 20 case studies based on his experience working with organizations. He co-direct's IMD's Leading Digital Business Transformation executive program, and has designed several customized programs for companies such as Credit Suisse, Vodafone, Maersk, Zurich Financial, PSA Peugeot Citroen, and Cartier. He has provided consulting services, executive education, and expert evaluations to public and private sector organizations, including IBM, LVMH, Nestlé, Google, and Novartis. Michael obtained Honors BA, MBA and PhD degrees from the Richard Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario, Canada. He has lived and worked in seven countries and currently resides with his family in Switzerland.

Jeff Loucks is a director with the Cisco Digitization Office and a visiting scholar at the Global Center for Digital Business Transformation, an IMD and Cisco initiative. Jeff works with Global 500 firms and innovative startups to explore the strategies and concrete steps companies must take to thrive in an era of digitization. Through fifteen years of research, writing, and consulting, Jeff has helped companies capitalize on technological change by transforming their business models. Jeff is especially interested in the strategies organizations use to adapt to accelerating change. An extensive academic background complements his technology expertise. He wrote his PhD dissertation on Machiavelli (one of the world's great strategists) and draws upon philosophy, psychology, and political science to understand both institutional and human responses to today's escalating challenges. Jeff has a BA in political science from The Ohio State University, and an MA and PhD in political science from the University of Toronto. He resides in Ohio with his wife and two sons.

James Macaulay is a director with the Cisco Digitization Office and a visiting scholar at the Global Center for Digital Business Transformation, an IMD and Cisco initiative. With nearly two decades of high tech experience, and an extensive body of published research, he has been at the forefront of Cisco's thought leadership to define digital market transitions and their implications. He is a professional researcher and works with companies around the world to design their digital change roadmap. Prior to Cisco, he spent seven years as an entrepreneur, running a consulting startup focused on high tech market research and strategy. He has managed technology research portfolios in both the private and public sectors, having served as an analyst with Gartner in Silicon Valley and the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade in Brussels. James holds a BA (with honors) from Dalhousie University and an MA from the University of Toronto, both in political science. He currently lives in British Columbia with his wife and two children.