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MMBA8089 – Designing Organisations for a Digital World

2022 – Term 2, In person-scheduled-weekday, City

General Information

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Unit convenor and teaching staff Unit convenor and teaching staff
Kristine Dery
kristine.dery@mq.edu.au
Credit points Credit points
10
Prerequisites Prerequisites
Admission to MBA or GradDipMgt
Corequisites Corequisites
Co-badged status Co-badged status
Unit description Unit description

In a fast-moving digital world organisational strategy and design is central to build and mobilise change capability. Designing organisations to meet ever-changing customer needs and harness rapidly developing new technologies is a critical leadership responsibility. Organisations reliant on hierarchical structures and decision-making to develop and implement strategy are often too slow for the innovation and agility required in a digital world. In contrast, organisations designed for a digital world are able to deliver innovative customer experiences by leveraging people, processes, data and technology to unlock new enterprise-wide capabilities. Understanding how to effectively design businesses for sustained success requires a focus on operational design and new ways of working.

In this unit we will examine five building blocks that contribute to business success for digital: operational backbone, digital platform, shared customer insights, accountability framework, and an external developer platform. We will examine what it takes to design, build and implement these building blocks and how they work together to transform organisations to deliver new customer and employee experiences.

Important Academic Dates

Information about important academic dates including deadlines for withdrawing from units are available at https://www.mq.edu.au/study/calendar-of-dates

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:

  • ULO1: Demonstrate an understanding of the role and relationship between organisational design, digital technology, and digital transformation.
  • ULO2: Evaluate and apply different perspectives for digital design using the five building blocks model.
  • ULO3: Analyse and assess organisational capability gaps and development needs to create value in a digital world.
  • ULO4: Examine and identify leadership skills critical for managing a future-ready workforce.

General Assessment Information

Design a Digital Offering:

This assessment requires you to design a digital offering for your firm or another firm that you are very familiar with. You will be required to apply the framework that we have discussed in class and meet the criteria for a digital offering in a way that presents a  new solution to a customer problem. You will create a video presentation of your offering that can be shared with your classmates for their critique. The final version of the video that must acknowledge changes and improvements following class online and in-person discussion will be assessed.

Crowd-sourced Learning Community

You are required to view all of the class videos and provide constructive feedback, questions on-line. You will be assessed on the quality of your feedback and questions in the context of the course material. This on-line feedback will comprise most of your grade together with the quality of your participation in the class discussion in Week 8.

Digital Offering proposal (2000 words max)

Using your digital offering or a new innovation for your company or a company you are familiar with develop a business case that considers at least 4 of the 5 building blocks suitable for presentation to the senior leadership team. The proposal may use dot points, diagrams, and include links to relevant materials. You need to show that you have understood and engaged with the relevant building blocks and can deliver a compelling argument for your innovation to go to the next stage of development. 

Assessment Tasks

Name Weighting Hurdle Due
Crowd-sourced learning community 30% No Video due May 8, critique due 15 May, in-class Week 8
Designing a Digital Offering 30% No Final video due midnight June 05
Digital Offering Proposal 40% No Upload by midnight May 19

Crowd-sourced learning community

Assessment Type 1: Participatory task
Indicative Time on Task 2: 12 hours
Due: Video due May 8, critique due 15 May, in-class Week 8
Weighting: 30%

 

Participate in class discussions and in the discussion forum.

 
On successful completion you will be able to:
  • Examine and identify leadership skills critical for managing a future-ready workforce.

Designing a Digital Offering

Assessment Type 1: Design Task
Indicative Time on Task 2: 22 hours
Due: Final video due midnight June 05
Weighting: 30%

 

Develop a plan for a digital offering for an organisation and make a video.

 
On successful completion you will be able to:
  • Demonstrate an understanding of the role and relationship between organisational design, digital technology, and digital transformation.
  • Evaluate and apply different perspectives for digital design using the five building blocks model.

Digital Offering Proposal

Assessment Type 1: Project
Indicative Time on Task 2: 20 hours
Due: Upload by midnight May 19
Weighting: 40%

 

Develop a business case for a proposed digital innovation.

 
On successful completion you will be able to:
  • Demonstrate an understanding of the role and relationship between organisational design, digital technology, and digital transformation.
  • Evaluate and apply different perspectives for digital design using the five building blocks model.
  • Analyse and assess organisational capability gaps and development needs to create value in a digital world.

1 If you need help with your assignment, please contact:

  • the academic teaching staff in your unit for guidance in understanding or completing this type of assessment
  • the Writing Centre for academic skills support.

2 Indicative time-on-task is an estimate of the time required for completion of the assessment task and is subject to individual variation

Delivery and Resources

This unit will be delivered in-person with a hybrid option for those who cannot get to class. The preferred learning mode s to be in the classroom to take maximum advantage of the interaction with industry leaders who will be with us for most classes.

The Text that will form the backbone of the unit is:

Ross, J. Beath, C. and Mocker. M (2019) “Designed for Digital: How to Architect your Business for Sustained Success” The MIT Press, Cambridge Massachusetts

It is recommended that you purchase a copy of this text as it will be assumed knowledge before each class. Classes will be highly interactive and it is anticipated that we will learn from each other as the term progresses. Each session builds on the one before it. 

Unit Schedule

Unit Schedule

Text: Ross, J. Beath, C. and Mocker. M (2019) “Designed for Digital: How to Architect your Business for Sustained Success” The MIT Press, Cambridge Massachusetts

 

 

Week

Topic

Short description

Readings

Five Building Blocks for Digital Transformation

#1 April 4

Digitized vs Digital

To deliver sustained business success in a digital world companies need to get good at both digitizing (operational excellence) and becoming digital (new value propositions). In this session we will explore the differences and examine a series of cases that bring these concepts to life. In this session we will introduce the Five Building Blocks that will be further developed in the next five weeks of the course.

Text: Chapter 1, pp 1-19

Case study: Royal Philips

Further reading:

https://cisr.mit.edu/publication/2018_0101_PhilipsDigitalTransformation_RossMockerVanZoelen

https://cisr.mit.edu/publication/2018_0601_BuildingBlocks_RossMockerBeath

 

#2

April 11

Designing a Customer-centric enterprise

Digital enterprises are customer obsessed. They become great at understanding the experiences that customers want currently and also at making sure that they are capable of constantly sensing changing needs and creating the organisational agility to respond. In this session we will set up the group assignment and the sprints to give students hands-on experience of working in agile ways and to craft a digital innovation to meet a critical customer need.

Text: Chapter 2, pp 21-38

Case study: Schneider Electric

#3

April 18

Easter Monday (no class)

Alternative session to be advised

 

#4

April 25

Anzac Day (no class)

Alternative session to be advised

 

#5

02 May

Building an Operational Backbone

Architecting the way IT is designed and managed is critical to creating the flexibility and agility to meet rapidly changing customer and employee needs. IT units in digitally progressive firms look very different from more traditional IT departments. This session will examine IT architectures, leadership and ways of working required to develop a digital backbone that is fit for digital.

Text: Chapter 3, pp 39-56 and Chapter 4, pp 57-76

Case study: Lego

Further reading:

https://cisr.mit.edu/publication/2017_0201_NewestGovernanceChallenge_UmbachRoss

 

 

#6

09 May

Making the workforce Accountable

Firms that are future-ready are less focussed on structure and more concerned with decision rights, the development of their workforce capabilities and leadership based around coaching and communicating, rather than  command and control. In this session we will look at how companies are changing accountabilities for digital.

Text: Chapter 5, pp 77-100

Case Study: CarMax

Further Reading:

https://cisr.mit.edu/publication/2020_0901_SerialDigitalOfferings_FonstadMocker

https://cisr.mit.edu/publication/2020_0601_BuildingComponentizedOrganization_RossBeathNelson

 

#7

16 May

Partnering to build capabilities

Increasingly firms are finding that they cannot deliver the desired customer experience alone and therefore they need to partner in some way with other organisations. These partnerships, however, need to be digital forms of engagement in order to deliver value fast enough and at a cost to build sustainable value. This session will look at ways of digitally partnering including external development platforms.

Text: Chapter 6, pp 101-117

#8

23 May

Group Presentations

Digital offerings from each group will be presented to the class.

Text: Chapter 7, pp 119-141

New ways of Working and Leading for Digital

#9

30 May

Test & Learn approaches to product development

Contemporary digital businesses have innovation as part of their DNA. In these two sessions we will look at how companies consistently test and learn to develop new digital offerings for customers. The ability to manage products in this way not only requires new work practices, but also new workforce capabilities.

https://cisr.mit.edu/publication/2022_0301_ThreeLearningImperatives_FonstadMocker

https://cisr.mit.edu/publication/2019_0501_LearningFast_RossFonstad

https://cisr.mit.edu/publication/2018_0201_TestAndLearn_FonstadRoss

Case study for Weeks 9 & 10: DBS Bank

#10

06 June

Investing in a Future-ready Workforce for Digital

https://cisr.mit.edu/publication/2020_1201_FutureReadyWorkforce_DeryWoernerBeath

 

#11

13 June

Leading with Data

Leaders in digital organisations not only need to understand how to manage ways of working that are more aligned to test and learn approaches, they also need to be more evidence-based. As data is managed in ways that shed new insights onto problems and opportunities, it invites leaders to ask very different questions.

Readings:

Text: Chapter 8, pp 143-152

Case study: BBVA

Further Reading:

https://cisr.mit.edu/publication/2022_0301_ThreeLearningImperatives_FonstadMocker

https://cisr.mit.edu/publication/2018_0701_DataDrivenBBVA_WixomSomeh

 

10

 

Summary of the course

 

 

 

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Unit information based on version 2022.02 of the Handbook