Why it's been a Remarkable Pivotal Year for Digital Leaders

What will you remember about 2019?

I believe 2019 will go down as a pivotal year for how businesses will continue to invest in technology, data, automation, and customer experience. In 2020 and beyond, more companies will look for digital transformation to drive growth opportunities and expand to new markets, while disruption will increase to those that are lagging.

Here are some indicators:

The top fintech news included Fidelitybuying Worldpay, the launch of Apple's credit card, and the controversy over Facebook's Libra cryptocurrency.

The top retail news story was the closing of 9,300+ stores including Payless, Gymboree, Sears, and Walgreens.

Digital health startups have raised well over $10 billion in funding across nearly 1,000 deals over the last two years with many investments targeting the “iron triangle” of health care systems.

The biggest tech news stories include IoT. As of 2019, there are over 26 billion IoT devices with 127 new devices connected every second. Worldwide spending on cloud computing is expected to hit $210B in 2019.

The AI gap continues to widen, and while only 23% of businesses have incorporated AI into processes and product/service offerings today, 83% of companies say AI is a strategic priority for their businesses.

2019-20 - The Pivotal Year for Digital Leaders

For 2.5 years since I published Driving Digital and started StarCIO, I have been advising business executives and digital technology leaders they have to be smarter, faster, and innovative with their transformation programs.

I covered some of these critical points in my recent SincUSA Executive Insight interview:

What changed in 2019?

Here are some key takeaways from the program:

• CIOs are beyond asking about their role in digital transformation. In 2019, questions transitioned from technology issues (cloud, legacy tech) to organizational change and growth priorities (customer experience, impacts with analytics, AI/IoT innovation).
• Digital leaders acknowledge that bimodal and waterfall practices are out and replaced by devops and agile methodologies.
• Until 2019, many CIOs challenged self-service BI and low-code technologies. In 2019, I saw a pivot with more CIO asking how to kickoff data governance in self-service BI and learning how to leverage low-code platforms to transform the workforce.  
• AI understanding is going beyond "what is AI" to the "how to kickoff AI experiments." AI is maturing beyond basic machine learning practices, simple natural language processing use cases, and embedded eCommerce recommendation engines. AIOps and AI in cybersecurity are essential areas for CIOs and CISOs to consider buying technology. In industries like oil and gas, it's use cases that integrate IoT data to real-time data streaming and machine learning that broke through the noise.
• Enterprises should be further with their devops programs, and some are relying too much on what works in startups. Laggards should get started with devops, and enterprises should consider broader programs to mature devops practices and culture.  
• ERPs are the next frontier in modernizing small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). 

Best reads of 2019

In addition to these insights, I want to share with everyone some of my best reads of 2019. Last week I published my top book reads of 2019 in digital transformation, entrepreneurship, startups, and AI. 

For readers of the Driving Digital Newsletter that I publish, I always share five noteworthy reads in every newsletter. Here's a sample of some of the more important reads:

• Agile practices endure and continue to adapt
• ‘Low-Code’ Becomes High Priority as Automation Demands Soar
• CIO presentation to the board of directors: Candid tips from CIOs
• 5 Reasons You Should Consider Implementing DataOps
• 9 AI trends on our radar
• Promoting Purpose in Agile Environments

What's coming in 202? Stay tuned!