Tuck roundtable examines agility and resiliency in the enterprise
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 13, 2007
CONTACT: Kim Keating - 603-646-2733
HANOVER, N.H.—JetBlue’s storm delay problems and the tainted pet food discovery and recall are just two recent examples of large-scale, unexpected business disruptions. They underscore how important it is for companies to anticipate problems and respond quickly and effectively.
On February 27, the Center for Digital Strategies at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth ran a roundtable discussion focused on how companies can build flexibility, adaptability, and resiliency into an enterprise. The roundtable, hosted by Bechtel in Sea Island, Georgia, was part of the Thought Leadership Roundtable on Digital Strategies series organized by the center. Chief information officers (CIOs) and other senior executives from leading companies participated in the roundtable and discussed such topics as the most important areas to consider when anticipating business disruptions (terrorism, competitor actions, natural disaster, information leaks), best practices around vulnerability analysis, and how can IT help the enterprise simultaneously defend today’s market and create tomorrow’s.
During the daylong discussion, executives were joined by academics from Tuck, MIT, and Georgia Tech to discuss the issues that businesses face in creating an enterprise that can be prepared for, respond to, and indeed anticipate both sudden and/or fundamental changes. Participating companies included Bechtel, 3M, Canadian Pacific Railway, Eastman Chemical, Eaton, Hasbro, IBM, ING, and SYSCO. Dave Margulius of Enterprise Insight moderated the discussion.
The event yielded a range of insights, including:
- Unexpected disruptive events are increasing in frequency while global business is becoming leaner and more interconnected, heightening the importance of investing in resilience and agility.
- It’s the planning—not the plan—that matters most: building general capabilities is far more effective than trying to anticipate and protect against specific threats.
- Building flexibility is preferable to redundancy as a strategy for preparedness.
- Companies should use high-profile events as catalysts to drive awareness, given the challenge of justifying time and resource investments in continuity planning.
- People and relationships are key success factors in crisis response, and companies should focus their preparation energies accordingly.
- Treat well-understood risks and completely unknown threats differently, both in preparation and response.
- Resilience and risk management should be embedded in DNA as a core cultural value, like safety and quality.
The Thought Leadership Roundtable on Digital Strategies series is an executive roundtable series held in locations around the globe at which Fortune 500 CIOs and functional/business vice presidents discuss business issues and how they are affected by information technology. The moderated discussions prompt a focused, participative collegial working group. Participating CIOs are encouraged to bring executive colleagues so that they may further their thinking on the topic together, while also benchmarking with peers from other industries. The aim is to share best practices, discuss problems, and examine solutions. The roundtable series is run by Tuck’s Center for Digital Strategies with the guidance of an executive committee of CIOs from Bechtel, Cargill, Cisco Systems, and Hasbro. The roundtable generally meets three times each year.
The Center for Digital Strategies promotes the development and practice of digital strategies—the use of technology-enabled processes to harness an organization's unique competencies, support its business strategy, and drive competitive advantage. Through its programs and research, the center examines the impact of technology on all aspects of management and strategy, including supply chain, marketing, and product development. The center also addresses issues throughout the extended enterprise, including globalization, organizational change, and information security.
To read more about this roundtable, visit the Thought Leadership Roundtable website. To receive a copy of the overview, please contact the Center for Digital Strategies at 603-646-0899.
Founded in 1900, Tuck is the first graduate school of management and consistently ranks among the top business schools worldwide. Tuck remains distinctive among the world's great business schools by combining human scale with global reach, rigorous coursework with experiences requiring teamwork, and valued traditions with innovation.
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