We’re Not in an Innovation Industry!

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy’s new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

A few weeks after the September 2008 stock market crash, Domino’s Pizza shares closed at $3.03. Less than 10 years later in August of 2018, they closed above $300. Yes, I’ve chosen the gap between the low and the high, but those numbers are real—better than Amazon, Google or any of the other darlings of the market in that period. And it’s a pizza company.

There are a number of reasons why that turnaround happened, but one of the major drivers has been the company’s digital transformation. It recognized that it was actually an “e-commerce company that just happens to sell pizza,” and it enabled customers to order via Twitter, home automation or even an Apple watch. In some markets, it is experimenting with drone-based pizza delivery. This is a company that is embracing technology.

Why all this talk about pizza? Well, I still meet a lot of project managers who tell me they haven’t been taking any notice of disruptive technologies or digital transformation because they work in an industry that isn’t affected by it. There simply isn’t such an industry today. Domino’s is the extreme, but I have consulted on digital transformation with companies in heavy industry and manufacturing, in government, in construction and many others. I guarantee that you work in an industry that is impacted by digital transformation …

Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.