Introducing BCG X: combining talent and technology to build world class companies of the future
The UK Government recently published its Digital Strategy 2022, charting a path to strengthen the country’s position as a global tech leader, encouraging investment and innovation to ensure that the nation can compete at an international level. But how close is the UK to becoming a global tech leader, and what lessons can be learned to support UK companies looking to transform?
New research from BCG suggests the majority of UK businesses are struggling to turn this appetite for innovation into business impact. From the increasing difficulty of knowing what solutions to invest in, to a shortage of talent to guide the journey, many companies need external support to achieve their strategic goals.
Responding to this need, Boston Consulting Group (BCG) has today launched BCG X to bring together cutting-edge tech and design talent with BCG’s deep industry knowledge and strategy consulting expertise to help the world’s leading organisations solve their biggest technology challenges.
UK investment lagging
CEOs and their leadership teams typically understand that they need to deliver rapid progress in digital transformation, but most still struggle to turn their commitments into significant positive impact for the business.
Indeed, in our survey of nearly 2,700 global tech and digital transformation decision makers, 93% admitted they struggle to navigate the rapidly growing landscape of new disruptive technologies. And this ecosystem complexity is also slowing speed of impact, with 84% of respondents citing the challenge of coordinating multiple vendors as a factor. When it comes to investment, the overall trend is positive. Despite economic uncertainty, 60% plan to grow investment to accelerate deployment at scale, while 36% plan to maintain their current pace.
However, UK tech investment and achievement trails other major economies. Only 40% plan to increase spending, while just 50% reported having achieved at least half of the transformation goals – the lowest and second lowest of the 13 countries surveyed respectively.
Achieving ambitions
Although there’s general acceptance that digitisation is a good thing, it’s apparent there’s an underlying resistance to adopting the ways of working that will align digital aspirations with the day-to-day reality needed to make them succeed. The result: businesses, especially the more conservative ones, risk being trapped in an increasingly outdated mind-set. This stifles innovation and destabilises bottom line performance for the long term as the challenges that a comprehensive digital transformation can address aren’t going away.
As shown by our research, there are still issues around understanding what the enabling technologies, such as AI, can actually deliver. This tech complexity will continue to accelerate, and the next decade is likely to see even more disruption as new technologies like Deep Learning, Web3, Synthetic Biology and the Metaverse provide both risks and opportunities for companies.
Finding the right skill sets to implement strategies can be a problem, too. BCG has always prided itself on hiring the best consulting and functional talent, and with BCG X we’re now creating a home for the world’s best technology build and design talent as well. We believe London will continue to be a magnet for this type of talent, and we’re looking to grow and expand our team here in the city.
Despite the growing ambition to transform, many businesses still need help making the right choices. That’s why enterprises of all sizes should seek a technology partner with a proven track record of helping deliver scalable, bespoke strategies. BCG X has been created to enable innovation at scale and create bold new solutions that are ready to run from day one.
With BCG, our dedicated global teams not only understand the opportunities and challenges associated with disruptive innovation, they can also help businesses migrate away from legacy operations and infrastructure to progressive digital-first alternatives. Business leaders understandably don’t like to dismantle processes that appear to be working, and change is never easy, but the ideas around widespread digital transformation have gained credibility and momentum, especially since the pandemic. BCG X is ideally positioned to help enterprises turn their digital aspirations into reality.
Maintaining momentum
Digital transformation isn’t a one-off realignment – it’s a long-term commitment. It requires the adoption of new, agile ways of thinking if the benefits of disruptive innovation are to be fully achieved. It’s also not a business-first approach or a tech-first approach, it’s about creating a contiguous combination of the two.
The depth and breadth of experience embedded in our multidisciplinary teams enables BCG X, together with BCG, to help CEOs and senior leaders launch their next big bets and multiply our collective impact. Together, we’re creating the bold and disruptive products, services, and businesses of tomorrow.
BCG X is the tech build and design unit of BCG. Turbocharging BCG’s deep industry and functional expertise, BCG X brings together advanced tech knowledge and ambitious entrepreneurship to help organisations enable innovation at scale. Discover more here.