A service company sees more customers asking for a cheaper, self-service version of its offering. A small team builds a prototype, customers respond positively, and leadership agrees that digital delivery will matter. The next budget still directs most investment towards the established service because it provides the revenue the company relies on.
That decision may be understandable. The current business has customers, staff, contractual commitments, and known costs. The proposed replacement has encouraging feedback but limited evidence about repeat use, support requirements, or profitability. Recognising a change in demand does not settle how quickly the company should move towards it.
Brian Solis describes Digital Darwinism as the pressure created when technology and society evolve faster than organisations can adapt. The concept identifies a risk. Making it useful for strategy requires a closer examination of what has changed and what responding would involve.
Establishing What Changed for Customers
The company first needs to understand why customers want self-service. Some may be seeking a lower price. Others may want access outside business hours or a faster way to complete routine requests. Those differences affect which parts of the service should change and whether the new offer can serve a distinct need.
Technology becomes strategically relevant when it changes the options available to customers or competitors. A new delivery method might reduce cost, improve access, or make a previously difficult service practical. The presence of a new tool is weaker evidence than a demonstrated change in customer behaviour.
For this company, useful investigation would follow real requests through the proposed service. Which customers complete the task, where do they need help, and do they return? Interviews can explain preferences, while actual use tests whether the proposed offer meets them.
The company should also examine where the existing service remains valuable. Complex cases may still require specialist attention. Understanding that boundary helps it develop a response with a defined purpose rather than replacing the whole business on the assumption that everything will move online.
Understanding the Economics of the Transition
The entrant and the established business face different investment choices. A new company can organise around digital delivery from the beginning. The incumbent may need to maintain existing service commitments while developing the alternative, with customers moving between them at an uncertain rate.
A lower-priced offer can attract customers while reducing revenue from people who previously paid more. It may also reduce the cost of serving them, but those savings depend on what actually changes. If the same staff and facilities remain necessary, digital adoption can grow before total costs fall.
Leadership therefore needs a transition model that includes customer movement, duplicated operation, investment requirements, and the work that can eventually stop. Estimates should expose uncertainty about demand and cost rather than treating the mature business and prototype as equally predictable.
Netflix’s introduction of streaming in 2007 provides a concrete example of adding a new delivery method alongside an established DVD service. That history demonstrates coexistence during change; it does not establish that every incumbent should make the same investment or expect the same outcome.
Giving Experiments a Useful Purpose
An experiment should resolve an uncertainty that matters to the decision. For the self-service offer, that might be whether customers can complete routine work without assistance or whether support costs leave room for a viable price.
The team needs access to suitable customers, enough operational support to test the service, and a record of what it is trying to learn. A demonstration shown only to executives may establish technical feasibility while leaving demand and delivery economics unexamined.
Early measures should reflect the stage of development. Completion, repeat use, support effort, and willingness to pay can be more informative than comparing prototype revenue with the mature business. As evidence improves, the standard should extend to reliable delivery, acquisition costs, retention, and the resources required to grow.
This gives experimentation a limit as well as a purpose. If customers do not return or the service requires too much assistance, the company should revise or stop it. Strategic importance does not remove the need for evidence.
Aligning Targets With the Proposed Change
The existing business may be expected to meet its revenue target while contributing staff and customers to the new offer. Managers then face conflicting instructions: protect current performance and support a transition that may initially weaken it.
Leadership needs to make that conflict explicit. If it wants a business unit to release specialist staff or accept deliberate customer migration, its targets and resources should reflect that decision. Otherwise the established operation can block the change simply by prioritising the commitments it is still expected to meet.
The new initiative also needs clear authority. Someone should be able to resolve disputes about customer access, pricing, staffing, and the boundaries between services. Giving a team responsibility for growth without those decisions leaves it dependent on informal cooperation.
Some separation can help protect early learning. The team may need its own budget and measures while the offer develops. It also needs an agreed route to the capabilities it will require later, including distribution, customer support, and production systems.
Deciding When Resources Should Move
A successful pilot creates a further decision. Leadership needs to determine whether the evidence justifies expanding the service and which existing commitments will change to support it.
For the company, that decision could depend on repeat demand, manageable support effort, acceptable delivery quality, and a plausible financial model. The thresholds should be discussed before enthusiasm for the pilot turns expansion into an assumed next step.
The resource decision needs to be concrete. A larger budget without access to experienced staff may leave the team unable to deliver. Additional customers without operational support may expose them to a service that worked only under close supervision.
Disruptive innovation theory can help investigate some competitive situations, particularly when an entrant serves customers the incumbent finds unattractive. Other changes follow different mechanisms. The response should fit the observed market and the company’s capabilities rather than the label attached to the technology.
Managing the Existing Business During Change
The established service continues to have obligations while the alternative grows. Staff need to know which customers remain on it, which capabilities must be maintained, and how the company will handle declining volumes if migration proceeds.
This work belongs in the transformation roadmap. The company needs a sequence for moving customers, adapting support, and retiring arrangements that are no longer required. Without that work, the new offer can add another operating model while the costs of the original remain.
The transition may also reveal reasons to preserve part of the old service. Some customers may need specialist help that self-service cannot provide economically. A mixed offering can be appropriate when its purpose, costs, and responsibilities are understood.
Reviewing Adaptation Against Results
Adaptation should be evaluated through what changes for customers and the business. Launching a digital channel establishes availability. Repeat use, improved access, sustainable delivery costs, and reduced reliance on obsolete processes provide stronger evidence of progress.
The company should review those outcomes alongside its original assumptions. If self-service attracts a different customer group, the opportunity may be broader than expected. If it shifts existing customers without improving cost or experience, the business case needs further examination.
Digital Darwinism is useful when it encourages this attention to changing conditions. Responding well requires the ability to investigate an emerging need, make a bounded investment, and adjust commitments as the evidence develops. For the service company, that produces a clearer decision about what to preserve, what to change, and how to support the customers moving between them.
