The Future of Competitive Strategy

20

Introduction

©2022 MIT. This excerpt is from The Future of Competitive Strategy by Mohan Subramaniam, published by The MIT Press.

Digital Ecosystems

Digital Strategy

Digital Capabili es

Digital Customers

Data

Digital Compe tors

Figure 0.3 The data to digital strategy journey.

with these platforms? How do they recognize new competitors in their digital ecosystems? What new capabilities should they build? Finally, how can they select an approach that helps them establish a competi- tive advantage through the interactive data acquired in their digital ecosystems?

Core Focus and Structure of the Book

The core focus of this book is on how legacy firms can unlock new value from data through their digital ecosystems to execute a digital competi- tive strategy. All the chapters of this book rally around this core theme. Their ideas are anchored on a central framework of digital ecosystems, introduced here as a combination of production and consumption eco- systems. These digital ecosystems are specially intended for legacy firms to unlock new value from data; and, they are different from the digital ecosystems of the digital titans many of us are familiar with. The digi- tal ecosystems framework offered in this book, enables legacy firms to retain their prevailing product-driven strengths, yet also find new value from data. All in all, this book is a novel “data to digital strategy” jour- ney highlighting along the way four key digital enablers—ecosystems, customers, competitors and capabilities—and how to harness each of them for competitive advantage and growth (see figure 0.3 and table 0.4).