How Digital Is Your Business?

• Author: Marshall, Jeffrey
• Position: Review

By Adrian J. Slywotzky and David J. Morrison. Crown Business, 237 pages. $25.00.

The book's title question is a critical one in today's economy, but Slywotzky and Morrison -- authors of two recent, widely acclaimed books, The Profit Zone and Profit Patterns -- insist that the answer isn't merely a matter of technology infrastructure. Becoming a digital business, they write, involves more than setting up e-business units, having a terrific Web site, developing great software or "wiring" your workforce. Rather, "it's about using digital technology to become unique... to create and capture profits in new ways."

"Unique" is a much-abused word, but the authors really believe corporations need to embrace a singular vision of how to leverage technology. Digital strategies build on existing ones and will fail unless they offer differentiation, create new business models that capture profits and "develop powerful new value propositions for customers and talent," they argue.

Slywotzky and Morrison, consultants at Merger Management Consulting, take the generic to the concrete...