In Search of Digital Excellence

When Karl-Heinz Streibich, CEO of Software AG invited me to help with his book The Digital Enterprise: The Moves and Motives of the Digital Leaders, he invoked Tom Peters and his best seller In Search of Excellence. Karl-Heinz said we need to profile innovation using a wide range of technologies across business processes in many industries and many countries.

I think we did pretty well.

Major contributions in the book come from C-level executives and thought leaders in the following chapters:

Create Smarter Products
Nissan Motor Co., Ltd, Japan 
Echo Entertainment Group Ltd., Australia

Make Your Services Agile
MAPFRE S.A., Spain 
DB Systel GmbH, Germany 
Städel Museum, Germany

Evolve Your Business Models Beyond Products and Services
Hubert Burda Media Holding, Germany
Qualcomm, Inc, USA

Invent New Go-to-Market Models
Coca-Cola Enterprises, USA
TUI InfoTec GmbH, Germany

Outpace Your Industry and Your Competition
Deutsche Telekom AG T-Systems, Germany

Rethink Speed
Standard Chartered PLC, Singapore
BBVA S.A., Spain

Digitize Your Factory
DFKI GmbH, Germany
Siemens AG, Germany

Transform Your Value Chain
General Electric, USA

Reconsider Your Physical Assets
Statoil ASA, Norway

See Human Capital in a New Light
Accenture, Germany

Take Another Look at Interfaces
Daimler AG, Germany

Scrutinize Analytics
Allianz Group, Germany

Think Over Constraints, Think about Sharing
DATEV eG, Germany

Go Over Risk Scenarios
Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany

Reexamine Your Stakeholders
acatech, Germany

This book project itself ended up as a “Digital Enterprise.” When Tom Peters wrote his classic in the 80s that inspired Karl-Heinz and countless other executives, he traveled extensively around the world to interview the subjects he profiled. In contrast, the Software AG team of editors, graphic designers, project managers, and translators who worked on this book leveraged a variety of widely available collaboration infrastructure. The interviews that appear in the book reflect hours of cross-border VoIP calls, and they were captured on a Zoom digital recorder and backed up in the Google Cloud. The graphics leveraged the Adobe Creative Suite. The book itself involved product of plenty of digital creativity and collaboration.

Pre-order your copy of this 400 page collection dripping with digital excellence at Amazon here.