20 Best Books to Accelerate Your Digital Transformation

Today, the adoption of digital transformation is imperative for every business to survive and thrive in a highly competitive marketplace. Business benefits of digital transformation include higher enterprise-wide productivity and efficiency, enhanced user experience, in-depth and accurate insights, faster and better business decisions, and improved agility and innovation, resulting in increased business revenue and sustainability. We have got the 20 best books that can help you accelerate your digital transformation journey. Let's dive right in.

20 Best Books for Digital Transformation Adoption and Acceleration

1. Digital Transformation Playbook: Rethink Your Business for the Digital Age by David L. Rogers
2. Digital Transformation: Survive and Thrive in an Era of Mass Extinction by Thomas M. Siebel
3. Agile IT Organization Design: For Digital Transformation and Continuous Delivery by Sriram Narayan
4. The Technology Fallacy: How People Are the Real Key to Digital Transformation by Gerald C. Kane, Anh Nguyen Phillips, Jonathan Copulsky, Garth Andrus, Paul Michelman (Editor)
5. Building the Agile Business Through Digital Transformation: How to Lead Digital Transformation in Your Workplace by Neil Perkin (Goodreads Author), Peter Abraham (Goodreads Author) (Co-author)
6. Digital Transformation at Scale: Why the Strategy Is Delivery by Andrew Greenway, Ben Terrett, Mike Bracken, Tom Loosemore
7. AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order by Kai-Fu Lee
8. Clearing the Digital BLUR: How Organizations Can Transform Themselves At the Speed of Digital by Rajiv Jayaraman
9. Platform Scale: How an emerging business model helps startups build large empires with minimum investment by Sangeet Paul Choudary
10. Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy--and How to Make Them Work for You by Geoffrey G. Parker, Marshall W. Van Alstyne, Sangeet Paul Choudary
11. Modern Monopolies: What It Takes to Dominate the 21st Century Economy by Alex Moazed, Nicholas L. Johnson
12. Edge: Value-Driven Digital Transformation by Jim Highsmith, Linda Luu, David Robinson
13. IT Strategy: A 3-Dimensional Framework to Plan Your Digital Transformation and Deliver Value to Your Enterprise by Jim Maholic
14. 77 Building Blocks of Digital Transformation: The Digital Capability Model by Jace An
15. Mastering Digital Business: How powerful combinations of disruptive technologies are enabling the next wave of digital transformation by Nicholas D. Evans
16. The Digital Matrix: New Rules for Business Transformation Through Technology by Venkat Venkatraman
17. Agile Transformation: Structures, Processes, and Mindsets for the Digital Age by Neil Perkin
18. The Transformation Files: 17 Insights to Inspire Managers and Leaders in the Transformation of a Digital Economy Business by Rob Llewellyn
19. The Future Is Faster Than You Think: How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries, and Our Lives by Peter H. Diamandis, Steven Kotler
20. The Industries of the Future by Alec J. Ross

1. Digital Transformation Playbook: Rethink Your Business for the Digital Age

by David L. Rogers

Rogers explores digital transformation phenomena and what distinguishes organizations that successfully adapt and thrive in the digital world.

With a decade of experience in global business consulting and teaching at Columbia Business School, Rogers explains how established companies can refresh their game plans to capture new opportunities in the digital world.

Pick this book for: The book focuses on practical tools and strategies for all businesses, big and small, across all industries, useful in decision making and strategy formulation. It contains case studies for a detailed illustration of concepts.

The Digital Transformation Playbook is an indispensable guide for executives that explains how legacy businesses can transform to thrive in the digital era.

Goodreads Rating: 4.15/5 (522 ratings)

2. Digital Transformation: Survive and Thrive in an Era of Mass Extinction

by Thomas M. Siebel

In his book, Tom Siebel provides much-needed clarity on digital transformation. The book talks about the convergence of four significant technology forces – big data, cloud computing, Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, and how they have revolutionized businesses in private and public sectors.

In his book, Tom illustrates the real-life digital transformation case studies at Caterpillar, 3M, U.S. Air Force, and Royal Dutch Shell and explains how top executives in an enterprise can successfully drive digital transformation.

Pick this book for: Besides helping his readers understand digital transformation, Tom offers actionable advice and concrete guidance for a successful digital transformation adoption.

Goodreads Rating: 4.04/5 (300 ratings)

3. Agile IT Organization Design: For Digital Transformation and Continuous Delivery

by Sriram Narayan

In the book, Sriram Narayan explores organizational design by IT leadership for IT organizations. He leverages his industry experience, existing literature on organizational design, and well-regarded work on a team and individual psychology to synthesize an Agile IT organizational design that could benefit the enterprise IT.

The book is a framework and standards agnostic and discusses problems, explores reasons, and provides solutions. The book is for top-level executives and IT governance group members for medium to large IT organizations that face business and IT agility challenges.

Pick this book for: Sriram has used real-life examples to help you evaluate and enhance enterprise designs to improve mastery, autonomy, and purpose.

Goodreads Rating: 4.07/5 (153 ratings)

4. The Technology Fallacy: How People Are the Real Key to Digital Transformation

by Gerald C. Kane, Anh Nguyen Phillips, Jonathan Copulsky, Garth Andrus, Paul Michelman (Editor)

The book explains why an organization should focus more on processes and people than on technology to respond to digital disruption.

The authors leverage their four years of research in partnership with MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte, interviews with managers in organizations, including Google, Walmart, Salesforce, and surveying 16,000+ people. They argue that businesses can successfully respond to digital disruption by changing the organizational culture to be more risk-tolerant, agile, and experimental.

Pick this book for: The book guides business leaders and managers to survive digital disruptions by making organizational changes to harness technology’s power.

Goodreads Rating: 4.17/5 (137 ratings)

5. Building the Agile Business Through Digital Transformation: How to Lead Digital Transformation in Your Workplace

by Neil Perkin (Goodreads Author), Peter Abraham (Goodreads Author) (Co-author)

The book guides the change managers and enterprise development professionals to understand, implement, and learn the workplace digital transformation. By setting aside the outdated strategies and traditional thinking, the book focuses on creating enterprise velocity, removing unnecessary processes, establishing iterative working, mapping strategy to motivation, embed innovation, and developing talent to succeed.

Pick this book for: The book efficiently delivers information to audiences of varied experiences and levels. It offers real-world case studies coupled with practical advice with more technical and academic knowledge and serves as an essential guide to building an agile organization.

Goodreads Rating: 4.32/5 (56 ratings)

6. Digital Transformation at Scale: Why the Strategy Is Delivery

by Andrew Greenway, Ben Terrett, Mike Bracken, Tom Loosemore

‘Digital Transformation at Scale’ guides the readers on how to build a digital institution. It explains how reformers in governments and businesses have globally enabled their enterprises' pivot to this noble way of working, with the lessons learned from their experience.

Pick this book for: The authors leverage their experience in designing and delivering the UK government's successful ‘Government Digital Service' (GDS), the new institution responsible for the digital transformation of government, creating public services for the internet era. Besides snipping GBP4 billion off the government's technology bill, GDS opened up public sector contracts to thousands of new suppliers and became tremendously popular among citizens with its superior-quality online services without a big marketing campaign. Private sector companies and other countries notified the GDS model’s success, and it's now being copied across the world.

Goodreads Rating: 4.27/5 (81 ratings)

7. AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order

by Kai-Fu Lee

In ‘AI Superpowers,’ Dr. Kai-Fu Lee reveals that China has rapidly caught up with the US at an astonishing speed.

According to Lee, Chinese and American AI will significantly impact white-collar jobs besides having a devastating effect on the blue-collared jobs as predicted by most experts. Lee claims that these unprecedented AI developments lead to dramatic changes much sooner than expected.

Pick this book for: He further explains the jobs that will be affected and those that can be enhanced with AI and discusses how we can offer solutions to some of the most significant changes in human history.

Goodreads Rating: 4.16/5 (8,422 ratings)

8. Clearing the Digital BLUR: How Organizations Can Transform Themselves At the Speed of Digital

by Rajiv Jayaraman

The new breed of competitors like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Alibaba are disrupting the industries using innovative strategies beyond the understanding of most seasoned enterprises.

The book helps you understand how these digital-born enterprises perceive the world around them. Besides helping you transform your organization to compete in today's digital rat-race, the book explains how to thrive in the digital age.

Pick this book for: Tackling the digital challenge calls for a fresh perspective compared to the industrial age management playbooks. ‘Clearing the digital BLUR’ serves as a guidebook for managers and leaders to accelerate digital adoption, backed by a modern strategy, leadership, execution, and culture. It offers a holistic approach to digital transformation through practical insights in actionable frameworks, case studies, worksheets, and leaders’ interviews.

Goodreads Rating: 4.33/5 (12 ratings)

9. Platform Scale: How an emerging business model helps startups build large empires with minimum investment

by Sangeet Paul Choudary

Contrary to selling a product or service, today’s massive scaling startups build a platform for others to create and exchange value. Some of the examples are social media, the Internet of Things, cryptocurrency, and more. Yet, most platform ideas fail due to a lack of proper understanding of the business design and growth strategies.

Pick this book for: Platform Scale not only writes down a structured approach to designing and scaling a platform business model, but it also addresses the key aspects that can succeed or fail businesses through six core concepts.

Goodreads Rating: 4.23/5 (415 ratings)

10. Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy--and How to Make Them Work for You

by Geoffrey G. Parker, Marshall W. Van Alstyne, Sangeet Paul Choudary

Fact-based, authoritative, ‘Platform Revolution’ is the first of its kind of “owner’s manual” for successfully creating a platform business model. It explains various ways for newbies to identify prime markets and monetize the network. It reveals strategies behind the upcoming business platforms to current business leaders and explains how traditional organizations can adapt to the change.

Pick this book for: Besides discussing regulation, security, and consumer trust and examining markets that may be mature for a platform revolution, the book explains the bright prospect of platforms. It shows how they will change the careers and lives of millions forever.

Goodreads Rating: 4.13/5 (2,845 ratings)

11. Modern Monopolies: What It Takes to Dominate the 21st Century Economy

by Alex Moazed, Nicholas L. Johnson

Platforms like Google, Amazon, Snapchat are game-changers. Rather than making things, these platforms create value by connecting people and dominating everyone’s daily lives worldwide. Mobile computing has transformed how we interact and blend the physical and digital worlds. While these enterprises are expanding their influence from the digital world to the entire economy, just a few individuals genuinely grasp this radical structural shift.

Pick this book for: In ‘Modern Monopoly,’ the authors explain what has changed, how it affects today’s organizations, and how business owners, entrepreneurs, and managers can adapt and succeed in the new era.

Goodreads Rating: 4.08/5 (585 ratings)

12. Edge: Value-Driven Digital Transformation

by Jim Highsmith, Linda Luu, David Robinson

In ‘Edge,’ the authors talk about the fast, adaptive, value-driven, iterative, lightweight, and powerful new operating model that helps achieve continuous innovation by closing the gap between digital strategy and execution.

‘Edge’ addresses three critical aspects, i.e., working together among the criticality of vital and rapid responses, allocation and tracking business investment funds for their goal and vision-based initiatives, and ways of rapid adaptation to thrive Agile.

Pick this book for: The book delivers practical insights leveraging its authors’ unparalleled experience and pioneering clients.

Goodreads Rating: 4.38/5 (42 ratings)

13. IT Strategy: A 3-Dimensional Framework to Plan Your Digital Transformation and Deliver Value to Your Enterprise

by Jim Maholic

With over a dozen IT executives and CIOs’ interviews, the book lays out the process from a blank whiteboard to an all-inclusive IT Strategy. ‘IT Strategy’ illustrates a range of technical and non-technical topics to facilitate readers to devise a road map to their desired future state and repeatedly emphasize the alignment of IT Strategic Planning with central business key performance measures and strategic business planning.

Pick this book for: With 25+ years of IT Strategist stint, Jim Maholic has consulted with many reputed and largest enterprises in North and South America. He leverages his expertise to deliver a notably thorough and consistently precise guide in ‘IT Strategy.’

Goodreads Rating: 4.86/5 (7 ratings)

14. 77 Building Blocks of Digital Transformation: The Digital Capability Model

by Jace An

’77 Building Blocks of Digital Transformation’ is a practical field book that explains the proven digital capabilities as the fundamental digital transformation blocks. It discusses the approach to assessing and enhancing digital capabilities for achieving successful digital transformation and is ideal for digital practitioners such as IT professionals, sales reps, marketers, digital planners, and digital consultants. The book consists of 12 mega capabilities (set of capabilities) and 77 capabilities.

Pick this book for: The book serves as a ready-made yet highly customizable solution for those organizations that find it challenging to establish a robust and agile framework for their digital operations.

Goodreads Rating: 4.83/5 (6 ratings)

15. Mastering Digital Business: How powerful combinations of disruptive technologies are enabling the next wave of digital transformation

by Nicholas D. Evans

‘Mastering Digital Business’ serves as a strategic guide for IT and business executives. Today, mobile, cloud, intelligent automation, IoT, social, analytics, wearables, and robotics are some of the most disruptive technologies.

Pick this book for: The author talks about how we can leverage these technology combinations and mastery in digital services, platform business models, and leading practices in corporate innovation to create and execute our digital strategies for competitive advantage.

Goodreads Rating: 4.21/5 (14 ratings)

16. The Digital Matrix: New Rules for Business Transformation Through Technology

by Venkat Venkatraman

The book helps its readers understand the types of players forming the new business landscape, the transformations that every business will experience, and the winning moves to ensure your organization’s success.

Pick this book for: It helps you learn to navigate the digital ecosystem world, discover how you can compete and collaborate with other organizations for creating and capturing value, realize how robust machines can maximize your organization’s human talent, and learn to assemble the team to experiment with new ideas, reassess your core beliefs, and reinvent your business strategy for the digital future. It explains how to rethink your business model, assemble the right team, and make bold strategic choices to harness digital technology.

Goodreads Rating: 4.21/5 (14 ratings)

17. Agile Transformation: Structures, Processes, and Mindsets for the Digital Age

by Neil Perkin

‘Agile Transformation’ offers practical advice and covers everything, including the need for new operating models, ways to apply agile principles at scale, how to leverage digital-native processes, and why change managers should think big but start small.

Pick this book for: It discusses tackling the staff mindset that can hinder agile adoption, create and engage high-performing teams for change, and why a plan of starting an agile business need not fail. Featuring case studies from organizations including Amazon, Netflix, and Vodafone, this book is vital for businesses to compete in the new world of work effectively.

Goodreads Rating: 4.5/5 (12 ratings)

18. The Transformation Files: 17 Insights to Inspire Managers and Leaders in the Transformation of a Digital Economy Business

by Rob Llewellyn

‘The Transformation Files’ is a collection of critical success factors that every leader should focus on during digital transformation adoption. Rob leverages his two decades of experience in 30+ countries to help some globally renowned firms generate commercial value from people.

Pick this book for: This knowledgeable and easy to read book is backed by relevant work experience and offers practicality to start applying the guidelines and insights immediately.

Goodreads Rating: 4.33/5 (6 ratings)

19. The Future Is Faster Than You Think: How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries, and Our Lives

by Peter H. Diamandis, Steven Kotler

‘The Future is Faster than You think’ investigates the impact of rapid technology acceleration on both our society and daily life. The book offers a prescient look at our impending future.

Pick this book for: The book explores the convergence of digital technologies and their revolutionizing impact on today's legacy industries and their impact on our daily activities such as governing our nation, raising kids, or caring for our planet.

Goodreads Rating: 4.33/5 (6 ratings)

20. The Industries of the Future

by Alec J. Ross

In the book, Ross distills his observations on the forces that are changing the world. Backed by nearly a million miles of travel to forty-one countries as Hillary Clinton's Senior Advisor for Innovation, Ross emphasizes the best opportunities for progress and discusses how countries thrive or sputter.

Pick this book for: The book explains the ways we will need to adapt. Ross offers a vivid and informed perspective on how sweeping global trends affect how we live in today and the future. Ross examines the particular fields that will form our economic future over the next decade, including the impact of digital technology, robotics, the commercialization of genomics, artificial intelligence, and cybercrime.

Goodreads Rating: 4.04/5 (6,868 ratings)

Conclusion

The above books discuss how digital transformation has affected practically every industry and every aspect of a business. They provide multifaceted solutions that offer insights on innovation and agility, helping companies achieve increased revenue and much-needed sustainability in today’s competitive marketplace.

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