March 14 2016, 17.16 PM IST || Pocket News Alert
Bangalore: March 14, 2016 – Mphasis, a leading IT services and solutions provider, and Knowledge@Wharton, the online business analysis journal of The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, today announced the release of a free eBook, Becoming Digital: Strategies for Business and Personal Transformation.
The eBook can act as a reference source for Indian enterprises, citizens and government, especially in the context of Digital India wherein the country is transforming itself into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy.
The eBook – which features original insights and research from Wharton and interviews with Fortune 500 executives – is available for free download in more than 200 countries through Amazon Kindle, Apple iBooks, Barnes & Noble Nook, Ganxy, Google Play, and Kobo. The eBook can be read on any of the retailers’ e-readers or by downloading a retailer’s eBook app to your computer desktop, tablet, or phone.
Experts from Wharton and top executives from leading companies show readers the way to personal and business digital transformation. Learn how to create a “mind map” so you can steer your company from analog to digital while staying anchored amid the fast-changing pace of digital technologies. C-level executives from a variety of industries also discuss how they each tackled digital transformation within their firms and what lessons they learned through the process. In addition, readers will glean insights on how to harness both data analytics and their gut feeling to spot emerging technologies before everyone else.
Mphasis CEO and Executive Director Ganesh Ayyar pens the eBook’s foreword, providing an unusually candid insight into his own transformation as he led a $1 billion technology services firm into the new digital era. Ayyar explains, “I started my digital journey -- knowing that I might fall and fail at times -- with a bit of candor about my shortcomings. In acknowledging my flaws to my team, I could truly start afresh with my digital transformation. I began looking forward to discussions with my reverse mentors, and started espousing and embracing new ideas. I even played what I prefer to call the angel’s advocate for every team experiment.”
But it is precisely this willingness to experiment – even risking failure – that is necessary to succeeding in digital. Business leaders who adopt a philosophy of experimentation send a signal throughout the company that people should not fear failure because it is part of the transformative process, according to Jerry “Yoram” Wind, director of Wharton’s SEI Center for Advanced Studies in Management and a marketing professor at the business school. Breakthroughs come in experimentation when people get over their natural inclination to be risk-averse. “That is why it is important to celebrate lessons learned from failures, as well as successes.”
Wharton professors provide these and other original insights, as well as research, on digital transformation, with discussions revolving around the eBook’s three main themes: Transformation of the leader’s mindset, balancing the analog and digital parts of business and gaining the ability to spot future technological trends.
Here are some excerpts from the eBook’s one-on-one profiles:
- “We have to constantly keep ahead and think about what the next big thing is,” Chieh Huang, Chief Executive Officer at tech start-up Boxed
- “Thirty years ago, in the mainframe era, we were masters of the universe. We set the pace of how fast technology moved and we were owners of the tech world. Then the Internet and the PC era came around,” Dana Deasy, Chief Information Officer, JPMorgan Chase
- “It’s our responsibility to help the business reinvent itself. It’s very important that we [in IT] should not believe that it is only our responsibility, because if we do, we will fail. It is the entire business’s responsibility to think about how to continue to reinvent itself,” Dale Danilewitz, Chief Information Officer, AmerisourceBergen
- “Publishing is in a tumultuous period of rapid change. What we’ve done in the past couple of years – and this is a huge part of our digital transformation – is become much smarter about the end consumer, not at all to disintermediate the bookseller but rather to be able to market to readers more effectively on the bookseller’s behalf,” Angela Tribelli, Chief Marketing Officer, HarperCollins
- “We’re really focused on providing an excellent digital experience, whether that’s online, mobile or some combination, in order to support what our clients are trying to do,” Hugh Westermeyer, Deputy CIO at First Republic Bank
For more information about the eBook, visit Becoming Digital: Strategies for Business and Personal Transformation here and at http://ift.tt/1QRo0zs.
About Knowledge@Wharton and the Wharton School
Knowledge@Wharton is the online business analysis journal of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. The site, which is free, captures relevant knowledge generated at Wharton and beyond by offering articles and videos based on research, conferences, speakers, books and interviews with faculty and other experts on current business topics. Knowledge@Wharton offers content in Chinese, Spanish and Portuguese and has a separate site for high school educators and students.
Founded in 1881 as the first collegiate business school, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania is recognized globally for intellectual leadership and ongoing innovation across every major discipline of business education. With a broad global community and one of the most published business school faculties, Wharton creates economic and social value around the world. The School has 5,000 undergraduate, MBA, executive MBA, and doctoral students; more than 9,000 participants in executive education programs annually and a powerful alumni network of 94,000 graduates.
About Mphasis
Mphasis (an HP Enterprise Company) enables chosen customers to meet the demands of an evolving market place. Recently named by American Banker and BAI as one of the top companies in FinTech and as the “Most Distinguished Digital Company in 2015” by The Economic Times, Mphasis fuels this by combining superior human capital with cutting edge solutions in hyper-specialized areas. Contact Mphasis on www.mphasis.com.
