To be a top performer in the digital economy-to become truly future ready-you need a playbook. Now you have one. It seems like almost every company you can think of-including your own-has embarked on a "digital transformation" journey. The problem is, many companies start down the road without a good sense of where they are going or a clear idea of how they will create and capture digital value. Not surprisingly, this leads to problems: failure to realize the value from digital in their bottom lines, wasted resources and effort, added complexity and dysfunction. This compact, no-nonsense book provides a solution. In their years of working with senior executives around the world, MIT research scientists Stephanie Woerner, Peter Weill, and Ina Sebastian noticed that these leaders knew they had to transform their businesses, but lacked a coherent framework and a common language-a playbook-to guide and motivate their employees and keep everyone focused on a common goal. Future Ready is that playbook. Based on years of rigorous research with data from more than a thousand companies-BBVA, CEMEX, DBS, Fidelity, Maersk, and many others-the book provides a powerful, field-tested "four pathways" framework that offers insights into the important dimensions at which a firm must excel in order to be competitive, as well as the organizational disruptions that every firm must manage as part of the transformation journey. The book includes instructive examples, sharp analyses, assessments to help companies benchmark themselves against top performers, and many illuminating visuals to help crystallize the data and ideas. Woerner, Weill, and Sebastian show that the goal isn't digital transformation but rather a profound business transformation. Future Ready is your essential guide for becoming a top performer in the digital economy.

Digital transformation is not about technology--it's about change. In the rapidly changing digital economy, you can't succeed by merely tweaking management practices that led to past success. And yet, while many leaders and managers recognize the threat from digital--and the potential opportunity--they lack a common language and compelling framework to help them assess it and guide them in responding. They don't know how to think about their digital business model. In this concise, practical book, MIT digital research leaders Peter Weill and Stephanie Woerner provide a powerful yet straightforward framework that has been field-tested globally with dozens of senior management teams. Based on years of study at the MIT Center for Information Systems Research (CISR), the authors find that digitization is moving companies' business models on two dimensions: from value chains to digital ecosystems, and from a fuzzy understanding of the needs of end customers to a sharper one. Looking at these dimensions in combination results in four distinct business models, each with different capabilities. The book then sets out six driving questions, in separate chapters, that help managers and executives clarify where they are currently in an increasingly digital business landscape and highlight what's needed to move toward a higher-value digital business model. Filled with straightforward self-assessments, motivating examples, and sharp financial analyses of where profits are made, this smart book will help you tackle the threats, leverage the opportunities, and create winning digital strategies.