New Research Reveals Why Fragmented Digital Progress is Putting Industries at Risk

Industries worldwide are entering a period of rapid reinvention as artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, geopolitical uncertainty, and demographic change converge. Despite sustained investments in digital transformation, many organizations continue to struggle with uneven progress marked by siloed innovation, fragmented capabilities, and significant maturity gaps across regions, functions, and business units.

Newly released research from Info-Tech Research Group warns that this fragmented digital evolution leaves organizations increasingly exposed as industry structures shift and traditional competitive boundaries erode.

Info-Tech’s Develop Your Industry of the Future Report provides leaders with a structured framework to anticipate disruption, identify the capabilities that will define competitive advantage, and articulate a clear, industry-specific vision before reactive strategies become ineffective. The research underscores that organizations that fail to take a proactive, future-focused approach risk being outpaced as transformation accelerates.

Drawing on insights from asset-intensive sectors such as manufacturing, Info-Tech’s analysis highlights mounting pressures that legacy organizations can no longer afford to ignore. Rising input costs, sustainability requirements, supply chain volatility, AI-driven disruption, and evolving customer expectations are forcing established players to rethink long-standing operating models. While incremental digital optimization once delivered value, the next phase of competition will favor organizations that adopt a forward-looking view of their industry and take decisive action now.

"Organizations don't collapse overnight. They are outpaced," says Manish Jain, Principal Research Director at Info-Tech Research Group. "Leaders need to stop treating the future as a distant possibility. The future is already here, unfolding in real time. Executives who rely on incrementalism or isolated pilots will fall behind. The organizations that succeed will be the ones that anticipate change, identify where technology strengthens or weakens their capabilities, and make decisive moves before the market forces them to."

Key Forces Accelerating Industry Transformation

Info-Tech’s research identifies several systemic pressures that make structured foresight essential for today’s leaders, including:

• Disrupted supply chains and rising input costs that undermine traditional production and distribution models.
• AI-driven automation and autonomous systems that redefine how value is created across the enterprise.
• Converging physical and digital ecosystems that enable outcome-based services and circular, closed-loop business models.
• Increasing regulatory, sustainability, and workforce complexity requiring new approaches to operations and talent management.
• Fragmented digital maturity within organizations, resulting in isolated innovation that does not scale.

According to Info-Tech, the coming decade will not reward conservative strategies focused solely on incremental gains. Organizations that embrace these shifts stand to achieve exponential improvements, including faster cycle times, dramatic productivity gains, near-zero downtime, and new revenue streams. Those that lag behind face commoditization, margin pressure, and talent attrition.

A Structured Approach to Building the Industry of the Future

To help organizations navigate accelerating disruption, Info-Tech’s Develop Your Industry of the Future Report introduces a three-phase methodology that enables leaders to create a customized Industry of the Future Report aligned to their sector, subindustry, and strategic context.

• Phase 1: Identify Strategic Business Capabilities
  Leaders define strategic objectives, clarify value drivers, and identify the business capabilities most critical to long-term competitiveness.
• Phase 2: Map Technology Trends to Stategic Capabilities
  Emerging trends—including agentic AI, autonomous operations, unified cybersecurity, and end-to-end value visibility—are mapped to strategic capabilities to assess where they enhance or erode business performance.
• Phase 3: Review and Prioritize Digital Use Cases
  Organizations identify and evaluate digital opportunities arising from the intersection of capabilities and trends. Use cases are prioritized based on impact and readiness, informing transformation investment decisions and culminating in a tailored Industry of the Future Report.

This approach delivers a clear, future-focused roadmap that connects technology investments directly to business outcomes, enabling leaders to act with confidence rather than react under pressure.

Closing the Foresight Gap

Info-Tech emphasizes that organizations must shift from reacting to disruption to proactively shaping their industry’s future. Traditional operating models, fragmented digital initiatives, and siloed decision-making are no longer sufficient to support the pace of change. By adopting a structured foresight methodology, leaders can align stakeholders, guide strategic investments, and position their organizations to lead through transformation rather than playing catch up.

The newly published report includes templates, capability maps, trend analysis tools, digital opportunity frameworks, and customizable executive presentation materials that help leaders translate future scenarios into immediate action. By applying the approach, executive teams can strengthen resilience, accelerate transformation, and prepare their organizations to thrive in an increasingly dynamic and technology-driven landscape.

Source: Info-Tech Research Group

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