IDC Future Enterprise Awards Virtual Event Series: Future of Digital Innovation
Produced by TechTalk Summits

What is the Future Enterprise?

The world is moving from Digital Transformation to Digital-First. In the beginning, it was all about the transition from analog to digital. Now, the next evolution in Digital Transformation is the move to be Digital-First. 

Digital is a permanent, yet dynamic fixture in this world. It applies to all entities (private, government, commercial) and asks the question, “Is there some digital-based capability/enhancement that could improve our lives and desired outcomes?

Entities and people are more connected, with greater interdependencies in a digital-first world. Entire ecosystems can intelligently leverage data to their advantage because access to digital technologies extends from individuals to organizations, and from governments to societies. 

The Future Enterprise: From Digital Transformation to Digital-First

IDC’s vision for the Future Enterprise is how organizations must operate and invest to participate in increasingly digital-first markets. It is a framework for fostering a digital-first culture, one that leverages trusted industry ecosystems, generates profitable revenue growth from empathetic customer experiences, and demonstrates an ability to adapt operating models to complex customer requirements. All of this is built on digital infrastructure and enabled by an intelligent, empowered, and well-connected workforce. 

We look forward to celebrating the North America best in class in each of the Future Enterprise’s digital agendas.

Future of Digital Innovation

Organizations are shifting their priorities from consumption of software towards producing software that is embedded in products and services.  Most of this production of digital innovation will be focused on creating new value for customers, though some may augment internal digital workstreams.  These new digitally innovative products and services enable the organization to gain more market share and change up their offerings to bring a differentiated competitive product or service within their own industry.  Utilizing these new techniques in digital innovation is changing up organizations of all types and sizes to become high-performance, large-scale producers of software-based digital innovation. 

IDC categorizes digital innovation factories as end-user organizations that are embracing at least two of the four pillars of plan, source, develop, and distribute in conjunction with their software creation and use. The development of software may include development for integration into the company's core products; actively sourcing externally created (open or closed source) components or external APIs and/or actively distributing code. This change up is resulting in organizations showcasing their digital resiliency by adapting current products and services to newer more digitally innovative market offerings, capitalizing on the opportunity to set up a longer-term trajectory for their products and services. 

IDC's Future of Digital Innovation award winners stood out for their novel ideas, willingness to take big risks and ability to collaborate well. We'll highlight best practices embraced by our award winners.