Research setting
The study examined three globally operating Nordic industrial organisations. The researchers conducted 41 interviews. Company names were withheld under confidentiality agreements.
What the organisations changed
The organisations combined business specialists with digital specialists, involved customers in co-creation, tested ideas before large implementation commitments and shared learning from successful and unsuccessful experiments. They also used external ecosystems to access knowledge they did not need to own alone.
Observed pattern
Across the cases, customer centricity, agility and extended collaboration appeared repeatedly. The study does not provide a simple before-and-after financial result. Its contribution is to explain the organisational practices leaders used to support transformation.
Why these practices mattered
They made transformation a managed learning process rather than a sequence of technology installations. Experimentation exposed assumptions before scale. Cross-functional work connected technical feasibility with business and customer needs.
What leadership should take from the research
Translate culture into operating mechanisms: who can test an idea, what evidence permits scale, how customers participate, who owns risk and how learning is recorded. A statement about innovation will not change behaviour unless decision rights and incentives also change.
What this means for infrastructure decisions
A credible proposal should address adoption, operating ownership, learning, integration and future change—not only whether the technology can be installed.
Source and evidence note
Butt, A., Imran, F., Helo, P. & Kantola, J. “Strategic design of culture for digital transformation.” Long Range Planning 57 (2024), 102415. DOI: 10.1016/j.lrp.2024.102415.
Peer-reviewed qualitative multiple-case study. Organisations are anonymised; reported factors are cross-case findings rather than a quantified causal claim.