This was originally posted in August 2018 on LinkedIn
During my time at Microsoft I have been focusing on the Digital Transformation Showcase 2.0… we call it the DTS 2.0 for short. This is where my team and I are looking to bring the DTS 2.0 experience to every city in the U.S. focusing on digital transformation storytelling and uncovering how we can leverage Microsoft technology — Mixed Reality, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and AI — to find solutions for more contacts.
What is digital transformation?
Digital transformation is about re-imagining how you bring together people, data and processes to create value for your customers and maintain a competitive advantage in a digital-first world.
One key role I had this summer was becoming a subject matter expert on all aspects of digital transformation. I conducted research on how digital transformation looked across industries, watched Microsoft leaders define key concepts in videos, read nearly 100+ digital transformation partnered stories, experienced a HoloLens demo, and had the opportunity to visit Microsoft’s Envisioning Center.
A look into my in-person digital transformation experiences
Microsoft HoloLens Demo
During my first week at Microsoft my team was signed up for a HoloLens demo. Like most individuals (especially falling in the millennial category) I’ve heard about the HoloLens and couldn’t help but feel skeptical if the videos online were the true depiction of the technology. After six demos — inside facilitated, individual, and themed rooms at Redmond HQ — ranging from life on Mars to Microsoft layout and Remote Assist my expectations were exceeded. Actually quite honestly, the experience was mind blowing. The video included down below is my favorite demo. Microsoft Remote Assist enables you to collaborate remotely with heads-up, hands-free video calling, image sharing, and mixed reality annotations. Firstline workers can share what they see with an expert, while staying hands on to solve problems and complete tasks together, faster.
Microsoft’s Envisioning Center
My Microsoft Camp group — which is a small group of interns grouped together with two FTE mentors from Microsoft — went to visit the Envisioning Center for a team bonding event. There we saw the future of technology. Imagine if you could order your coffee, see a flier of a cooking class in line, take a photo, and Azure/AI could save that information and generate similar opportunities in the upcoming week. How about reinventing what it means to work remote by utilizing surface hubs, Skype, and 360 cameras to have team meetings in any part of the world. What about a smart home, when you step inside after a long day and a voice will start speaking to you. It can provide you with updates from your partners schedule, allow you to video call your neighbor on any piece of glass as you walk around the house, project holograms on the counter to help you with that salmon cooking recipe, and provide you with updates on what your child learned today based on their school syllabus.
Microsoft technology impacts companies and industries by finding digital transformation solutions
At first it may be challenging to grasp the concept of digital transformation. Some may even ask, “how can we predict the next big technology break through?” or “where do we even start?” What helped me answer those questions is breaking digital transformation into two parts:
1) Focusing on a specific company with a predetermined pain point to solve
If we were to put Tesla under a microscope and analyze their production numbers in 2017, one pain point for Tesla may have been improving efficiency in their factories or warehouse’s. If companies are aware of a pain point area in their business the output may be an iterative cycle of developing a new digital transformation solution or re-using a digital transformation solution solving a similar type of need.
2) Focusing on a specific industry with the mindset of “What If…”
Other times it’s about taking your company to the next level and staying relevant. For this, I couldn’t help but reference the “Hedgehog Concept” from Good to Great by Jim Collins (shout out to my undergrad Business Management of Organizations course for connecting the dots). Collins Hedgehog Concept is a metaphor to showcase the contradictory principle that simplicity can sometimes lead to greatness. His theory concludes to make the transformation from Good to Great is often not doing many things well, but instead, doing one thing better than anyone else in the world. This is where digital transformation can come in play and how companies can utilize Microsoft’s “What If…” exercise. With this exercise, companies are asked to zoom out to industry level and look for ways they can maintain or excel their momentum in our quickly changing market.
The key takeaways from the Hedgehog Concept are:
- What you can be the best in the world at (and, equally important what you cannot be the best in the world at). If you cannot be the best in the world at your core business, then your core business cannot form the basis of your Hedgehog Concept. This basic understanding goes far beyond core competence. A core competency does not guarantee that you can be best in the world at it. Conversely, what you can be the best at might not even be something in which you are currently engaged.
- What drives your economic engine? Most of the good-to-great companies discovered a single driving denominator as profit per x, which had the greatest impact on their economics. For social sector, instead of economic, resource engine — which is broken into three parts as time, money, and brand.
- What you are deeply passionate about. The good-to-great companies focused on those activities that ignited their passion. The idea here is not to stimulate passion but to discover what makes you passionate.
Microsoft stories confirm that digital transformation can bring results
I read 100+ Microsoft stories confirming that digital transformation can bring results. More importantly it can empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. I will share my top three stories down below and encourage others to explore: Microsoft Real Stories or Microsoft Customer Stories to discover thousands of more.
1. Education \ Breaking the Language Barrier
The distinguished Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in Rochester, New York, is renowned for graduating successful professionals who are deaf and hard of hearing. They account for 8.8 percent of the school’s nearly 19,000 students. To best serve them, the National Technical Institute for the Deaf was established at RIT in 1967. Here dedicated researchers — many of them deaf themselves — are working with Microsoft, using artificial intelligence and Microsoft Cognitive Services to develop a custom automatic speech recognition solution, making the world more accessible and inclusive for all students.
2. Education, Government, & Empowered Citizens \ Connecting Rural Communities With Affordable Broadband
The time is right for the nation to set a clear and ambitious but achievable goal: to eliminate the rural broadband gap within the next five years — by July 4, 2022. We believe the nation can bring broadband coverage to rural America in this timeframe, based on a new strategic approach that combines private sector capital investments focused on new technologies along with affordable public sector support.
3. Healthcare \ How Merck is Driving Innovation with the Microsoft HoloLens
Merck is an American-headquartered pharmaceutical company operating globally, and is one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. They are always looking at how technology can empower their scientists and make them more productive. The team wanted to understand how Bot technology could reduce the time it takes for scientists to find information. Merck partnered with Microsoft to create a voice enabled chatbot using HoloLens and Cognitive Services. This is currently in a proof concept phase with the researchers.
Not convinced yet? Check these additional stories out:
- Smart Infrastructure \ Advancing the World’s Infrastructure
- Retail \ Online Retailer uses Cloud Database to Deliver World-Class Shopping Experiences
- Manufacturing \ Smart Factories introduces tomorrow’s innovators to Industry 4.0
- Financial Services \ Building Blocks For More Transparent Aid Delivery
- Health \ Seeing AI: New Technology Research to Support the Blind and Visually Impaired
Are you starting to think about digital transformation?
With only two more weeks left with my summer internship, I can say that I’ve become a true champion for digital transformation. I become so excited talking about digital transformation and the good it can have for companies, communities, and our world.
‘Digital transformation’ is more than just a catchy phrase for Microsoft’s cloud customers.
Digital transformation is real and has the potential to take things to new heights. It’s like being a young child waking up from a mystical dream not being able to differentiate what was real or not. That is our reality every single day, we can do the impossible and transform what we’ll be doing tomorrow.
