Five Pillars of Digital Mindset

A Digital Mindset is built upon a minimum set of capabilities in each of five areas we refer to as the five pillars of a digital mindset. To develop a digital mindset, you do not need to become a computer programmer or a data scientist. You do not have to acquire any programming language skills nor do you need to master statistics or quantitative methods. You do need to have a minimum level of understanding and proficiency in each of the five pillars so you can ask the right questions of subject matter experts and lead teams that will chart the course to the digital future. You do need a basic understanding of the existing and emerging digital building blocks that will be necessary but not sufficient to create the new opportunities and business models that deliver value to customers. Your digital mindset is the digital lens you bring to the creative effort as you arrange the digital building blocks into specific patterns to solve customer problems and deliver new value. This is not a skill that most programmers and data scientists have as they generally don’t understand the customer problems and how to arrange digital building blocks to create new value. 

Developing a digital mindset requires effort, new learning and practice, but is achievable by those who persevere. Consider for a moment the skill of riding a bicycle. To learn to ride a bicycle, one needs to understand several critical elements of the bicycle. The handle bars are used to steer the bike by pushing either to the left or to the right. The brakes are used to stop the bike. Riders must understand the difference between coaster brakes and hand brakes. Both are used to stop the bike but, hand brakes provide more control as a small amount of pressure on the brake can be used to slow the bike but not bring it to a full stop. The pedals are used to propel the bike forward. Riders quickly learn to stay upright on the bike, they must be moving.  What most riders don’t realize they have learned a basic principle of physics known as the gyroscopic effect.  Riders learn about the gear shift lever that allows the rider to change gears to meet various conditions including pedaling up hills. Riders learn the bike must be moving to shift gears. Having learned some basics and how to balance on the bike, riders are ready to begin their riding journey. Riders don’t need to understand how the chain drives the back wheel or the gear ratio between the chainring, which is attached to the pedals, and the freewheel. To actually ride the bike a minimal understand of the bike is required, then one must practice for it is through practice that the art of riding a bike is actually mastered. The five pillars of a digital mindset, which are described below, must first be learned at a basic level then practiced. 

Digital technology building blocks are the basic elements that are assembled and utilized to create new opportunities, business models and value for customers and other stakeholders. They include elements like hardware, software, data and digital objects. Digital objects are increasing in importance as the ability to make a digital object unique using non-fungible tokens has been established through blockchain. An example of a digital object that has become well know is The First 5000 Days, a piece of digital art that sold at a Christies auction in February 2021 for $69M[1]. There are approximately sixty basic building block elements. One needs a basic understand of what they are, what they do and how they fit into a larger system. 

Thinking Patterns describe the ways in which you think or the approach you take to thinking. Research has identified 15 thinking patterns that support the digital mindset.  Combinatorial Thinking, for example, involves combining two or more of the digital technology building blocks into a single solution that would solve a problem. The motorcycle was likely a result of combinatorial thinking by Gotlieb Daimler who placed a small gasoline driven engine on a bicycle to increase the speed of the bicycle[2]. Some would argue American inventor, Sylvester Roper, actually invented the first motorcycle when he placed a small two-cylinder engine driven by steam on a bicycle. Regardless of who the inventor was, it was combinatorial thinking that resulted in combining two technologies an engine and a bicycle to create the motorcycle. 

Digital Behaviors are the specific actions taken by individuals in the digital space to meet the individual’s need or in response to the individual’s thoughts. According to Dr. David Feinberg[3], former Google Health VP, currently Cerner CEO, 7% of Google searches are health related, approximately 1 billion searches per day. Dr. Google is the most visited healthcare expert on the planet. A study by eligibility.com found 89% of US users google their symptoms before contacting their healthcare provider. In addition, a Penn Medicine study found 50% of patients searched for clinical information related to a medical issue in the weeks immediately preceding a visit to the hospital for that very issue.[4] The digital breadcrumbs left by users provide a data trail from which insights about user behaviors can be formulated. Understanding digital behaviors and how data associated with these behaviors can be acquired is an important capability of a digital mindset.

 Data Driven Insights represent insights obtained through advanced analytic approaches that reveal patterns and trends that cannot be perceived by the unaided human eye. Shell Oil’s Pernis refinery in South Holland Netherlands occupies 1,400 acres with thousands of miles of pipe and 20,000 control valves that manage the flow of product through those pipes. In 2014, one of the control valves failed resulting in the need to close the facility for repairs for 3 weeks costing Shell millions of euros. As each of the control values has sensors, Shell focused on utilizing the data from these sensors to predict future control valve failure. Using available control valve sensor data with predictive analytics, Shell built models of “normal control value behavior”. By understanding “normal behavior” when anomalies appear, Shell now has insights into control valves with a higher risk of failure which they are able to act on and replace before the valve fails. The insights provided from the data utilizing predictive analytics has identified 85 values since the 2014 incident that have been proactively replaced thereby avoiding both significant costs and downtime.

Value Creation represents the method for identifying important problems and focusing on the development of solutions that address these problems in a manner that creates value for the customer, the business or other stakeholders. The creation of value is dependent upon the customer context. The value created must be significant to the customer and meaningfully distinct from competitors. A commonly held belief in many organizations is senior leaders must have a background in and understanding of the industry. This background enables them to better understand industry and customer problems which is essential to the creation of value. Illumina, a leader in genomic sequencing and analysis of genetic variation, requires members of their leadership team to have technology backgrounds, in addition to being good general managers.[5] 

Creating new opportunities that deliver value for customers and other stakeholders is the challenge for organizations as they enter the digital era. Markets and industries are being disrupted. Organizations led by individuals with digital mindsets will have a far better chance of being the market disruptors rather than becoming the disrupted organizations in the digital era. 

[1] https://onlineonly.christies.com/s/beeple-first-5000-days/beeple-b-1981-1/112924

[2] https://www.wired.com/2011/08/0830daimler-first-true-motorcycle/

[3] https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/healthcare-information-technology/google-receives-more-than-1-billion-health-questions-every-day.html?oly_enc_id=0584I3205756I9O

[4] https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/healthcare-information-technology/google-receives-more-than-1-billion-health-questions-every-day.html?oly_enc_id=0584I3205756I9O

[5] Madden, B. J. (2016). Value Creation Thinking. United States: LearningWhatWorks.