Dive Brief:
- One in five business executives is a "digital leader," according to a study conducted by Oxford Economics and sponsored at meeting with SAP. A digital leader is defined by SAP as someone who engages in emerging technologies and, as a result, creates a more robust business environment.
- Those digital leaders are responsible for ensuring a more transparent enterprise with distributed decision making, according to the report. The study is based on survey results from more than 4,000 executives and employees in 21 countries.
- The report summarizes that a majority of organizations could benefit from adopting the digital leadership practices, with the potential for digital leaders to enact more data-driven approaches and real-time decisions.
Dive Insight:
The SAP report found that digital leaders encourage their employees in meaningful and productive ways. It emphasized that strong leadership creates more positive relationships and encourages the growth of digital creativity.
The report also pointed toward digital leadership creating a power shift in the enterprise. Now, many advancements and areas of success in an organization stem from successful digital initiatives. With strong leadership and the rise of digital natives in the enterprise, companies have the potential to grow more efficiently than ever before with more streamlined processes.
Digital leaders also have the added benefit of increased financial performance. More than three-quarters of digital leader executives reported strong revenue and profit growth, compared to 55% of all other surveyed execs.
