What Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion Actu­al­ly Is (Part I)

Pio­neer­ing is expensive 

David Bowie was arguably the most influ­en­tial musi­cian of the 20^th cen­tu­ry. A quick glimpse into his career will undoubt­ed­ly show his uncan­ny abil­i­ty to trans­form, adapt, explore and trailblaze. 

There’s one par­tic­u­lar chap­ter in his career that’s less known by peo­ple out­side of his fan cir­cle. He con­ceived, financed and led an Inter­net Ser­vice Provider called, of course, BowieNet. Back in 1998, the Thin White Duke released a paid ser­vice for dial-up inter­net. You know, the kind that you paid month­ly to con­nect your old screech­ing modem to the vast, unex­plored, rebel­lious and free World Wide Web. For $19.90 a month you got a ser­vice sim­i­lar to what AOL could get, plus:

• An avatar-based vir­tu­al world where you could inter­act with oth­er fans in imag­i­nary, Bowie-esque, aes­thet­ic and quirky poly­gon-tex­tured 3D scenarios.
• Access to exclu­sive songs, releas­es and even live streamed events. ​“Streamed” might be an over­state­ment, since the 56kb modem speed was about 5,000 times slow­er than your stan­dard 2025 broad­band connection.
• Invi­ta­tion to fan forums where the chameleon­ic Zig­gy Star­dust him­self used to par­tic­i­pate under mul­ti­ple, often pur­pose­ly leaked nicknames.
• And of course an @bowienet email so you could show your badge to the world.

Com­pare it to today’s avail­able tech.

It was a pre­de­ces­sor for Sec­ondLife, WoW or, of course, the extrav­a­gant and use­less Meta­verse. BowieNet laid foun­da­tions for art, media and enter­tain­ment ser­vices like Spo­ti­fy or Net­flix. It gave fans unique vir­tu­al iden­ti­ties (skins) and nexus that inspired future pop and gam­ing cul­ture from The Sims to Fort­nite. It also pre-dat­ed 1:1 artist and fan­base con­ver­sa­tions that we might see on today’s social net­works from Insta­gram to Only­fans. And it estab­lished superb, high­ly cod­i­fied brand­ing that went way beyond artis­tic output.

BowieNet was a ground­break­ing endeav­or that inno­vat­ed at many lev­els. It nev­er scaled beyond a niche exper­i­ment and wasn’t com­mer­cial­ly suc­cess­ful. Inno­va­tion doesn’t always pay off.

Being ahead of your time can suck just as much as lag­ging behind. 

Build­ing the In-betweens

In a won­der­ful 1999 inter­view with BBC’s Jere­my Pax­man, the man who fell to earth shared his vision of what the future would bring in the inter­play of tech­nol­o­gy and art:

Dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion is noth­ing, and it’s every­thing. It’s build­ing that gray space in the mid­dle. It’s adopt­ing tech­nol­o­gy so it oper­ates upon real­i­ty, cre­at­ing the right gaps for our cus­tomers to fill and let­ting them define what our brand actu­al­ly is.

Ground con­trol

Let’s bring this down to earth. Dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion is NOT about:

• Chas­ing trends, but cre­at­ing adapt­able sys­tems. Walk­ing before we can run. Build­ing foun­da­tions. The most impor­tant thing our agency does is not design­ing or devel­op­ing ecom­merce web­sites, but show­ing our cus­tomers where the gaps are so they can have a sol­id foun­da­tion that can iter­ate and evolve in time.
• Com­plet­ing a check­list of tools. Plan­ning how to catch-up with tech­nol­o­gy usu­al­ly becomes a jour­ney where pro­cure­ment teams and com­pa­ny lead­ers go through end­less 3‑hour demos with dozens of plat­forms. Instead, take the time to real­ly under­stand what you want to achieve, instead of lock­ing your­self into what a cer­tain expen­sive piece of soft­ware can allow you to do.
• Fak­ing effi­cien­cy. A new PIM won’t fix your bro­ken process just like going to the gym doesn’t mean you’ll exer­cise. A poor­ly con­struct­ed data mod­el will ren­der your CRM use­less, no mat­ter how expen­sive or fan­cy it is. Improv­ing oper­a­tions is nev­er as easy as turn­ing a new sys­tem on. AI can’t ​“rev­o­lu­tion­ize” your team’s out­put if you don’t take enough time to real­ly under­stand what can be opti­mized, auto­mat­ed, or del­e­gat­ed to an agent.

Instead, it’s about an oper­a­tional mindset. 

We’re the past

I’d like to delve deep­er into an idea I believe should impact the way we man­age tech­nol­o­gy and brand­ing. We move back­wards into the future. As new tech is cre­at­ed, it starts to effect change, oper­at­ing into real­i­ty, and more impor­tant­ly, into iden­ti­ty. It alters the way we under­stand our­selves, how we relate to each oth­er. Our con­sump­tion habits. Our idea of what work is. The val­ues, ben­e­fits, ratio­nals and irra­tionals behind our choices. 

We can nev­er real­ly see those changes hap­pen­ing. We mere­ly mea­sure the results as a giv­en fact. Think of how dif­fer­ent the world feels now, com­pared to ten years ago. How many bold expert pre­dic­tions did you come across that were utter­ly wrong?

What we per­ceive as ​“the future” is, in fact, the lat­est snap­shot of our most recent past. We live real­i­ty through a rear-view mir­ror. The most we can do to ben­e­fit our orga­ni­za­tions, strat­e­gy and oper­a­tions is to under­stand our con­text, medi­ums, mes­sages and the inter­play of those spaces. Allow me to expand on that in the next chap­ter, two weeks from now.

It’s nev­er over

The term ​“dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion” implies that we can decide to change through tech. It’s actu­al­ly the oppo­site. As tech evolves, we’re con­stant­ly chang­ing, and so are our cus­tomers, our cul­ture, prac­tices, process­es and poten­tial. It is you who is being ​“dig­i­tal­ly trans­formed” all the time. 

It’s no longer a game of catch-up. It’s a prac­tice. And like any work of art, it’s nev­er complete.

We should obsess less about the tools, and more about what we want to achieve, when, and what we’re will­ing to do to get there. We’re always start­ing and restart­ing. Keep calm and embrace the ch-ch-ch-ch-changes. 

Rule of thumb

Effi­cien­cy and Opti­miza­tion, two beloved words for man­agers every­where, are a byprod­uct of strat­e­gy, vision and exe­cu­tion. They are tools, not goals. Under­stand the space con­nect­ing you and your audi­ence before fig­ur­ing out which tech­nol­o­gy will cre­ate the best bridge.

Just a few pointers. 

For help mak­ing plans and set­ting pri­or­i­ties, check out our Blue­print ser­vice.