| |October 20178CIOReviewecently, I was speaking with the CEO of one of India's largest corporations, when the topic of Digital came up. The corpora-tion in question was not just another Indian company ­ it was one that has consistently been one of India's most profitable compa-nies, paying high dividends to investors and performing consistently better than leading stock indexes.`What exactly do you mean by `Digital' when you speak of a Digital strategy?' he asked.`Well, it involves some form of connectivity. It's about connecting devices and equipment ­ in other words, your assets ­ to the Internet of Things, in order to collect per-formance data. We'd then need to analyze the data, de-liver it to a machine, or to an operator who can improve the performance of the machine.'`That is all fine,' he responded, `but what exactly is Digital about that?'`Well,' I tried explaining. `In your normal tech-nological setup, you don't have machines other than computers connected to the internet. What Digital does is that it goes beyond computers. It integrates the physical and the digital worlds, enabled by embedded computer intelligence.'`I still don't quite see why you'd call this Digital,' he said. When I asked for clarification, he replied, `This is what technology is supposed to do. This is what my IT person should do anyway!' Which brings me to my central topic: some senior business leaders still don't understand Digital. To be more precise, they don't understand the difference be- What Do You Mean when You Say `Digital?'By Amitabh Mishra, CIO, GE AviationAmitabh specializes in operational excellence and business transformation. He has more than 25 years of engineering, consulting and business transformation experience, and is one of India's 'Top Change Agent CIOs' (Enterprise IT World).IN MY OPNIONRAmitabh Mishra
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