A practical example of digital transformation

For Wärtsilä, a Finnish headquartered firm that employs around 18,000 workers and which manufactures and services power sources and other equipment in the marine and energy markets, digital business transformation is a very practical thing. In fact, back in December 2016, Marco claimed that Wärtsilä was "embarking on one of the boldest, innovative and most exciting digital transformation programmes in the industrial, marine and energy sectors." The company is not the most famous of firms, unless you work in the marine or renewable energy business, you may have never heard of it, but in fact, roughly one in two marine vessels in the world are either serviced, powered, navigated or propelled by Wartsila's technology. But what about today, how is the digital business transformation programme performing? "One of the things we've now decided to do is create a sort of digital boot camp, a digital academy, with a leadership programme on what it means to lead in a digitally-enabled business. Marco Ryan, a veteran in digital business transformation, likens this process to a digital onion, and compares the old way of doing things to the Parthenon. "At Wärtsilä, we had over 300 ideas submitted by colleagues in the last 18 months, of which about 50 or 60 have actually come into our incubation centres.