This is the UK’s biggest annual gathering of people focused on four key questions driven by digital transformation and is the only Digital or Tech Week in the UK that is truly nationwide. Over 30,000 free sessions have been booked by leaders in business, government and charities in the week ahead from across the whole UK.

Last Week I saw the focus of the digital community in the UK on London during LTW. There is of course no doubt about London’s importance as a global tech powerhouse, but this National Digital Week we have set up at Digital Leaders demonstrates so clearly that digital is now no longer a London led initiative. Every corner of the UK is now leading locally on delivering transformation of businesses and public services.

https://youtu.be/qqod3YQnMo4

No one is asking London to show the rest of the UK the way anymore beyond it holding the purse strings. The level of expertise, knowledge and networks outside of the capital means the opportunities for digital growth, skills and participation are being realised nationally and as we say at Digital Leaders its about being #notjustLondon”

At this year’s launch all four digital Ministers from the Home Nations with responsibility for Digital in their portfolio launched the Week together from their respective countries.  

As part of the launch, and emphasising the national nature of the week, my own Chair of Digital Leaders, Jacqueline de Rojas CBE, said that we remain focussed on creating an accessible and truly UK wide week, in which there are no barriers to participation”. 

She was followed by Chris Philp MP, Minister for Tech & the Digital Economy, DCMS who said that he wanted to boost the adoption of digital technology across the whole UK economy, and that doing that requires organisational leaders to have an in-depth understanding of the significance of digital transformation within their organisations. He called on all thee Digital leaders to double their efforts to help others at this important time.”

Speaking from Edinburgh, Ivan McKee MSP, Minister for Business, Trade, Tourism and Enterprise in the Scottish Government emphasised the importance of digital to everyone in Scotland. He said we all know digital is vital to everything we do. Our work, our social life, our shopping habits and our access to critical services is and will continue to be a critical part of everyday life in Scotland even declaring that the next ten years will be Scotland’s digital decade.”

In Cardiff, Lee Waters MS, Deputy Minister for Climate Change in the Welsh Government said that the week is a key opportunity to celebrate what is going on in Wales and to be inspired and to inspire each other. From Belfast, Conor Murphy MLA, Minister of Finance in the Northern Irish Government felt that the opportunity was to exploit these technologies to maximum effect to the benefit of everyone who lives in Northern Ireland.

For me London is no longer the sole driving force for digital change in the UK. As our Ministers all demonstrated, there is now a real commitment to transformation UK wide and the opportunities, benefits and challenges to get it right are well understood. Sharing and spreading that momentum is what our 5th National Digital Week is all about doing.

Digital Leaders Week

The post DLWeek 2022 Ministerial Launch appeared first on Digital Leaders.

UK
The data deluge in Formula One has lessons for Public services. That was the view from the Cognizant’s partnership with the Aston Martin Formula One team, in this fascinating look into the most technological sport on the planet.

https://youtu.be/1qNl-BrL5HU

Scotland
Taking lessons from Mars exploration this fascinating talk from a former Nasa expert put the case for the business opportunity for Scotland in growing it’s Space Economy

https://youtu.be/XVjVpwcyNFE

Wales
Wales set out a national strategy to improve, engage and include the whole country in its plan to emerge from the pandemic, but how can they do it? We found out in the annual lecture from a local government perspective.

https://youtu.be/JWI6S2tGRa4

Northern Ireland
That AI is transforming the utilities sector was the underpinning idea investigated in this lecture as we looked at how the water industry in Northern Ireland is transforming itself into a digital first business.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAXmjfE8_HQ

The post Space, Data, AI and Formula One debated in the 2021 Annual Lectures appeared first on Digital Leaders.

Innovating at speed is a novelty in many corporations. Old school business processes are big on planning, and short on doing. They’re too linear to address complex and changing variables. They don’t employ the right breadth of expertise – often taking a technology-first approach – or they lack the authority necessary to cut across departmental silos. Often, the response is to give up as ‘too hard to do’, and to relegate innovation to a ‘Lab’.

But there is a different way — what I call, ‘Rapid Business Innovation’.

The goal is to recreate a business, but with digital at the core, driven by customer centricity and data analytics. Not for its own sake, but to enable adaptation to new situations, and to create and capture value quickly. Early success enables strategy to be crystallised, and new opportunities unlocked across a client’s business.

In a big corporate setting, it is possible to deliver innovation quickly and successfully. It takes a blend of methodologies — Lean Start-Up, Agile software development, Design Thinking and Systems Thinking.

The process involves multiple stages of rapid making, testing and learning. Unpacking the problem into short stages enables exploration of multiple aspects of product fit, with confidence and at speed.

How does it work? Rapid Business Innovation has three essential features.

1. Take a system-wide outlook

See the business as a system, and look for any available lever to drive new value: customer need, operational efficiency, technical or commercial innovation. The idea is to understand inter-dependencies and leverage and unlock hot-spots of latent value along and across the value chain.

This agnostic, holistic approach seeks out the right balance between the desirability, business viability and technical or operational feasibility of an idea. It’s a framework for both identifying opportunities that meet specific business objectives and prioritising them according to their potential to create the desired impact within a realistic timeframe.

2. Employ expert interdisciplinary teams

Speed and focus derive from using genuinely empowered, expert, interdisciplinary teams to identify and exploit those opportunities that can be built. Design without engineering expertise is blind to both opportunities and constraints; commercial sense without design and technical capability can analyse but not create or make.

A highly skilled team with a breadth of expertise across technology, design and business strategy can work together in creative tension to gather insights, validate ideas and prove concepts – making almost at the speed of thought. The team should have a direct line to leadership and work within the business in close collaboration and constant communication, with pre-set decision points to enable momentum to be maintained.

3. Iterative adaptive process

This is an evidence-based and iterative practice. At the start of an engagement we gather insights directly from customers, employees and managers to make an early informed assessment of digital strategy, then prototype and test to understand performance in the real world, adjusting and evolving the strategy accordingly. Making creates a bias for action; action generates evidence; evidence builds momentum and trust.

The Lean digital mindset is focused on creating early value, establishing product fit, then scale; it’s tested through co-creation with customers and rapid prototyping of propositions, interactions, technology and operations.

The idea is to go to market early, and to use your businesses’ assets – be that customer relationships, data, operational systems or ready capital – to provide scale.

Early success enables strategy to be crystallised and new opportunities unlocked across a client’s business. As the strategy is executed a portfolio of investment opportunities emerges around a coherent set of complementary product and infrastructure programs.

More thought leadership

The post The three essentials of rapid business innovation appeared first on Digital Leaders.

In November 2019 we ran our first Virtual Summit, for an event called Insight Live made up of 50 speakers over a week. 

The Virtual Summit has a great user experience and speakers features. Users can take part in the event without leaving the comfort of their desk or home. Even better, unlike physical conferences where you can end up sitting through content you just don’t need, our Virtual Summit let’s you dip in and watch the specific talks on the topics that matter to you.

That first Virtual Summit attracted 1,800 attendees, who watched on average 7 talks each. The talks they chose were added to their calendar through automation and if they missed the talk they were sent a recording. The Digital Leaders team hosted each talk and we ran a Q&A with the audience and speakers after each presentation. 

We are using the Virtual Summit format again as part of Digital Leaders Week Online when there will be 100 talks during the week, running four parallel channels and with 8 webinar hosts. 

We are also running Virtual Summits for partners, with upcoming events in the Enterprise and Government sectors.

The team has also been working hard since January to accelerate our virtual capability and checking out the options for a Virtual Conference. 

We needed to develop a format that was right for Digital Leaders. Culturally, not many want to be in fully virtual spaces like “Second Life” or to wear a headset for a day. Technically, many of our member’s work computers will not allow them to download or support such technology.

I am pleased to say that our new Virtual Conference includes features for: real time interaction and delegate networking for an audience of 100-800; speeches from a virtual stage; chaired panel sessions; and space for sponsors and branding. Best of all it runs on a browser so does not require downloading. 

We will be running and announcing some Virtual Conference events shortly, when you can try it for the first time. 

We will certainly not be keeping this to ourselves and if you have a conference coming up that you need to move online, please do get in touch and we will certainly do our very best to help you. 

If you’d like to get in touch about running a virtual conference, click here.

The post It’s time for a Virtual Summit appeared first on Digital Leaders.

In the Digital sphere, there will be 3 separate pathways, all of which will give students a firm understanding of the Digital industry before allowing them to specialise further in their second year.

In this webinar the presenters including representatives from the Institute for Apprenticeships & Technical Education, Department for Education and employers who helped shape the qualification.

Webinar Presenters:

Carmel Grant is the Deputy Director for Technical Education in the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education. She joined the Institute in June 2018 and leads the delivery of Technical Qualifications as part of the introduction of Technical Levels from 2020. Following an initial career in banking, she joined the Civil Service and has worked in various policy, programme, project and financial roles across the Ministry of Defence. Prior to the Institute she worked at the Army’s Headquarters with responsibility for delivering strategic change and reform programmes for the Army’s transformation agenda.

Sanjeev Gupta is the Managing Director of a small consultancy (Strategic Discourse Ltd). As a specialist consultancy providing clients with support in the fields of strategy, operations, technology, marketing and communications, research and analysis, and sales enablement, we have specialists in many fields. Amongst Sanjeev’s many roles, he is a part-time lecturer, sits on a number of expert panels, and has recently completed work on the Digital T Levels for the Department. “As an employer, the new Digital T Levels are a great way to get young adults into technology-based roles. It allows businesses to really invest in the education of their younger staff – especially those who have not had formal post-school education, and ensures that learners are exposed to live situations where they can put their training into practice.”

Tim Ebenezer is Director of Digital at Foundation SP following his time as Technology Director for Civica and CTO for Fujitsu Defence. Tim has brought both SME and large business input to the T Level process, and was involved as a member of the Digital – Development T Level panel. Having led large scale digital transformation in the public and private sector, Tim is acutely aware of the need for greater breadth and depth of digital skill across the workforce.”

https://youtu.be/sYqh_rdobr8

The post T Levels: A new and exciting route into the Digital world for young people appeared first on Digital Leaders.

Industry leaders embrace the digital journey and explore uncharted opportunities through innovation, transforming their organisations. However, there are different organisational archetypes where different types of innovation are effective.

In this webinar, Geoffroy de Lestrange from Cornerstone OnDemand shared the insights from the survey of over 1,900 HR, IT and organisational executives from across Europe and explores four key ‘innovator archetypes’.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Us1hFdQ2Yw&feature=youtu.be

More thought leadership

The post Webinar Recording: Exploring the four archetypes of HR innovation appeared first on Digital Leaders.

We have published the first nine books from Emma McGuigan, Jacqueline de Rojas and Chris Yiu. Over the next few weeks we will be sharing more books worth picking up on wherever you are taking a well-earned break.

Tony Blair

Tony Blair, Executive Chairman of the Institute for Global Change and former Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, is reading ‘Thank You for Being Late‘, by Tom Freidman.

Buy Book

Sherry Coutu

Sherry Coutu, Executive Chair of the Board, Founders4Schools and Non-Executive Director, London Stock Exchange, suggests ‘Atlas Shrugged‘, by Ayn Rand.

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Paul Van Zyl

Paul Van Zyl, Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer at The Conduit, recommends ‘Anatomy of a Miracle‘, by Patti Waldmeir

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Matt Hancock

Matt Hancock MP, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, is reading ‘Black Box Thinking: The Surprising Truth About Success‘, by Matthew Syed.

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Liam Maxwell

National Technology Adviser for HM Government, Liam Maxwell’s choice for summer reading is ‘Content Design‘, by Sarah Richards

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Emily Ackroyd and Hazel Hobbs

Emily Ackroyd and Hazel Hobbs, Joint Directors of Strategy & Engagement at the Government Digital Service and Members of the Digital Leaders Advisory Board, recommend ‘Dear Madam President: An Open Letter to the Women Who Will Run the World‘, by Jennifer Palmieri.

Buy Book

Emily and Hazel also recommended:

The Future of the Professions: How Technology Will Transform the Work of Human Experts
Daniel Susskind and Richard Susskind

Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t
Simon Sinek

The Art of Action: How Leaders Close the Gaps between Plans, Actions and Results
Stephen Bungay

Rachel Neaman

Rachel Neaman, Digital Leaders Advisory Board Member, chose ‘Digital Dominance: The Power of Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple’, edited by Martin Moore and Damian Tambini

Buy Book

Rachel also recommended:

Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life
Adam Greenfield

Emma McGuigan

Emma McGuigan, Group Technology Officer for Accenture Digital, chose ‘Human + Machine: Reimagining Work in the Age of AI’, by Paul R. Daugherty and H. James (Jim) Wilson.

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Jacqueline de Rojas

Chair of Digital Leaders, Jacqueline de Rojas’ choice for summer reading is ‘Signals: How Everyday Signs Can Help Us Navigate the World’s Turbulent Economy‘, by Pippa Malmgrem

Buy Book

Jacqueline also recommended:

Happiness for Humans
P. Z. Reizin

Why Mummy Swears
Gill Sims

(Pre-order) The Leadership Lab: Understanding Leadership in the 21st Century
Chris Lewis & Dr Pippa Malmgren

Number One Chinese Restaurant
Lillian Li

Chris Yiu

Chris Yiu, Senior Policy Fellow at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, is recommending ‘Hedge: A Greater Safety Net for the Entrepreneurial Age‘, by Nicolas Colin.

Buy Book

Chris also recommended:

Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society
Eric Glen Weyl and Eric Posner

The People Vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It
Yascha Mounk

The post Digital Leaders share their top summer reads appeared first on Digital Leaders.

In this webinar, Steve Coaker, Head of Sales and Account Management at Nominet, will introduce to you .brand domain endings – how they can be used and how your brand can register its own.

The webinar consists of a 30-minute presentation followed by a 30 minute interactive Q&A.

Watch the full recording:

The post Are you ready for the age of the .brand? appeared first on Digital Leaders.

But what are the SEO implications of this growing landscape? How does Google treat these new gTLDs? How can you successfully switch your domain without harming your SEO?

In this session, Peter Meinertzhagen, Head of Content at Nominet, answers these questions and more.

The webinar consists of a 30-minute presentation followed by a 30 minute interactive Q&A.

Watch the full recording:

The post Webinar Recording: Domain endings and SEO: what you need to know to stay ahead appeared first on Digital Leaders.

This year, the Annual Lecture was given by Scot Gardner, Chief Executive, Cisco UK & Ireland. Having started out as a student at the University of Birmingham, Scot has since had over 25 years of experience in the Oil & Gas industry, consultancy and technology start-ups. Scot is now leading work to create smart cities, set up the world’s most connected train travel -HS2 and to bring 5G to rural communities.

Listen to the full recording with slides here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yak2JK7eNHQ&feature=youtu.be

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