Top Technologies By Maturity

While the scope of business strategy is increasingly defined by technology, not all technologies are equally important. To help digital leaders think about where to place their future technology bets, we published “The Top Emerging Technologies For Digital Predators” in 2017. More recently, as I was examining our latest digital survey results, I thought it would be helpful to see how tech priorities change based on digital maturity.

Using the digital transformation benchmark maturity levels, I looked at how digital maturity changes the way a company uses technology as part of its business strategy.

Three levels of digital maturity
Source: Forrester

At the highest level, it’s clear that more mature companies see technology as a critical driver of business strategy: 86% of advanced companies see technology as the most important driver of business strategy; fewer than half of beginner firms see technology affecting business strategy to the same extent.

The report splits out the priority of 16 technology categories by maturity and highlights how advanced companies differ from beginners. And even though relatively few companies overall explore emerging technologies like augmented reality, digitally advanced companies are much more likely to be experimenting with emerging tech.

WHAT IT MEANS

INNOVATIVE DIGITAL LEADERS WILL GAIN A CRITICAL COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

CEOs and CFOs have long been suspicious of CIOs’ requests to “experiment” with technology, preferring instead to see signs of a positive ROI before investing. But the approach to tech investment is already changing. As advanced companies fund the types of continuous experimentation necessary to deliver new customer value, less mature companies need to focus less on hard ROI numbers and more on building an innovative culture that’s free to experiment. In the meantime, advanced innovators will strengthen their lead.