One trend that will impact Internet of Things (IoT) development in 2018 is a significant growth in edge computing.

Senior management behavior is vital to the foundational change of establishing an enterprise culture for the digital era.

In this Advisor, we examine four common misconceptions that stand in the way of digital transformation.

Autonomous vehicles continue to make headlines.

This on-demand webinar explores how to achieve an enterprise integration strategy with conceptual reference models. You'll learn how to design the terms and concepts in conceptual reference models so that they represent the “stuff of the business,” not the stuff of IT, and make sense to business stakeholders. 

A small number of cutting-edge companies have effectively exploited big data’s potential. These companies have a strong focus on data gathering, recognize the potential value locked in their data, and effectively use machine learning to convert potential value into real, measurable business value. In this Advisor, we outline examples of three such companies and the way in which they utilize ML in practice.

This Advisor examines the use cases surveyed organizations indicate as being most viable for applying blockchain technology.

Just like excellent poker playing, deciding how and whether to act in an innovative effort requires both fast and slow systems of thinking. You need slow thinking to update your current beliefs with recent learning and then use fast thinking to act based on your experience and intuition. This Advisor explores some examples of fast and slow thinking in today’s organizations.

Jon Ward emphasizes the significance of enabling change. He believes that a culture of experimentation is required for digital transformation to succeed. Ward identifies important elements of an experimental culture, such as encouraging innovation and self-directed teams. He also specifies senior leadership behaviors as well as corporate governance approaches needed to build and reinforce an experimental culture.

The authors observe that many classic change management models fail to consider the significant dimensions of technology and innovation. They recommend devel­oping key performance indicators to track all dimensions of change, which will enable an organization to constantly improve its capability to implement change.They also present a case study.

David Coleman discusses three areas affected by digital transformation: customer experience, operational processes, and business models. Successfully trans­forming each area depends on a collaborative mindset. Coleman defines this mindset and shows how alignment of purpose and commitment to the task go hand in hand with collaboration. He illustrates the importance of a collaborative mindset in transforming processes that touch customers, internal processes, and the overall business model.

The authors highlight the challenge of resistance to change. They believe that leaders charged with digital transformation often ignore or underestimate employee resistance. And sometimes when they recognize resistance, they write it off as irrational behavior. The authors explore this and other misconceptions that stand in the way of effec­tive digital transformation. They propose an approach for involving and engaging employees in the change.

The authors examine the interdisciplinary theory of complex adaptive systems (CAS) and how this theory can be useful in digital transformation. They define nine properties of CAS theory, such as a constant state of flux. For each property, they describe the challenges and opportunities for digital transformation. Finally, they present CAS-based practices that enable change management.

Bill Fox focuses on the importance of forward thinking. He believes that this kind of thinking creates an environment where digital transformation occurs organically. Fox describes 13 foundational forward-thinking abilities, along with three approaches that help create a forward-thinking workplace.

Digital transformation is not for the faint of heart. It means disrupting your company before your competitors do. It means experimenting, without any guaran­tee of success. It means creating something new and unproven, while sabotaging what’s already working. Digital transformation means taking big risks. We are pleased to have nine authors share their change leadership insights in this issue.

It pays to really assess your current marketplace situation and learn from disruptors in your own or adjacent marketplaces. Enterprise architecture (EA) is an asset that you can use to counter the threat of disruptors. The three generically applicable scenarios we introduce in this Advisor may help you choose the right pattern for your EA, depending on the business model of the disruptor, your choice of counter-strategy, and your current EA maturity.

This Executive Update focuses on surveyed organizations’ use of in-house developers versus outside specialists for blockchain development efforts as well as a general overview of open source and commercial vendor blockchain platforms.

This Executive Update focuses on surveyed organizations’ use of in-house developers versus outside specialists for blockchain development efforts as well as a general overview of open source and commercial vendor blockchain platforms.

The most exciting development coming out of the recent consumer electronics show CES 2018 is Kodak's announcement that it plans to develop a blockchain-based photographic rights and royalties management platform (KODAKOne) and accompanying cryptocurrency (KODAKCoin). The goal is to enable photographers and other agencies to take more control over how images are commercially managed and licensed.

In this first episode of The Cutter Pod, Cutter Consortium Fellow Steve Andriole outlines his proven methodology for successful corporate digital transformation. Steve has witnessed a lot of digital transformation efforts in the past few years, and he’s culled the lessons learned into a methodology for digital transformation success. Steve begins this podcast by detailing the 5 steps to successful digital transformation. Then he reveals 5 myths that are swirling around digital transformation.

Shadow IT exists in your company. Some form of DevOps is being implemented, and somewhere online tools and the public cloud are being used without your approval. Shadow IT can create many risks and bad economic management of IT resources. You can choose to go to war and forbid the use of the new methodologies and tools or learn how to leverage them. This Advisor advocates for the latter.

Modern software systems are routinely very complex, comprising millions of lines of code with many thousands of dependencies. Moreover, software engineer availability, workloads, and turnover compound the problem of keeping track of the complexities of systems. In this Advisor, we examine the benefits of contextual software analysis for mitigating business risk.

The notion of architecting for flexibility so that enterprises can change is not new. But what about disruptive change? And why does disruptive change matter? Why now?

In this Advisor, the authors demonstrate their analytical approach with a direct and practical example of using Twitter data in real time to understand the sentiments (positive or negative) of trade show participants and to gain insights from them.

Agility is about being adaptable to changing environment conditions, delivering or acting swiftly to fulfill customer needs, and in turn becoming a successful and sought-after organization. Being connected to the fundamentals of agility and tracking the transformation progress based on the Agile principles described in this Advisor helps organizations to be on track toward transformation progress and stay connected to the big picture.