64 MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW FALL 2019 SLOANREVIEW.MIT.EDU
INNOVATION
Findthesweetspotbetweenwhattechnologies
candeliverandwhatyourcustomersneed.
BYJEANNEW.ROSS,CYNTHIAM.BEATH,ANDMARTINMOCKERD
igital technologies are forcing companies to reimagine their customer value propositions.
That’s because new social and mobile applications, analytics, the internet of things, artifi-
cial intelligence, biometrics, blockchain, cloud and edge computing, and many other
advances allow them to deliver value in ways that simply were not possible in the past.
But given all that potential, how does any company figure out which offerings are viable?
Digital technologies are game-changing — they provide ubiquitous data, unlimited connectivity, and massive
processing power. Savvy companies are converting all this capacity into digital offerings: information-enriched
solutions wrapped in seamless, personalized customer experiences. Think of Lyft: By using mobile and cloud
computing to connect people seeking a ride with drivers who will get them to their destination, it is addressing
pain points customers experience when they take cabs, like not knowing where the cab is and when it will
arrive, how much the ride is going to cost, or what payment options they will have.
Successful digital offerings are created at the intersection of what technologies can deliver and what cus-
tomers want and will pay for. That point of intersection, however, has proved to be elusive. To find it,
companies must experiment repeatedly, cocreate with customers, and assemble cross-functional develop-
ment teams — and the insights gleaned along the way must be shared internally.
In this article, we discuss how several of the nearly 200 companies we’ve studied have built and exercised
these capabilities.^1 We also take a close look at how one company, Schneider Electric, is using them to
acquire and share customer insights.Will Buy
Creating
Digital
Offerings
Customers