Innovation Inc: More Google Cloud customers and the difficulty of scaling digital overhauls

The coronavirus pandemic may have turbo-charged innovation efforts across corporate America, but in many ways the tough part is just beginning.

It's one thing to successfully transition a workforce to the remote setting by upgrading cloud licenses or investing further in security measures. It's another to overhaul the technology that underpins entire operations, spanning multiple regions and business units.

The difficulty of scaling IT projects is one reason why digital transformations continue to fail. In fact, just 13% of organizations that have deployed artificial intelligence have successfully scaled it, according to research from French consulting giant Capgemini.

And it's not because the tech itself is faulty. Instead, organizational and cultural hurdles often act as the biggest barrier.

"It's easy to just create an innovation lab because it's the flavor of the month," Adam Rubin, one of Capgemini's innovation heads, told me. "It's much harder, but much more rewarding, to treat innovation overall as a discipline."

That's why many technology leaders increasingly view themselves less as IT heads and more as change-agent-in-chief for their organization as a whole.

Rubin outlined three areas that companies looking to scale successful pilot projects should consider: establishing scaling as its own discipline, creating an innovation governance structure, and cultivating a resilient culture.

You can read more about each here. And below are a few other stories that you may have missed from the last two weeks.

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• LA's IT chief explains how city workers went from a 'unilaterally hated' security system to Zscaler after 48,000 employees had to start working remote
• The CEO of the $500 million startup rolling out its IoT-powered advertising tech in 2,500 Walgreens stores explains how it will help brands regularly reach a 'Super Bowl-sized' audience
• Bed Bath & Beyond just made a five-year commitment to Google Cloud as the pandemic pushes it towards a pivot to e-commerce
• Why Major League Baseball is using Google's newest hybrid cloud product Anthos at its stadiums to update scoreboards, calculate batting averages, analyze snack sales, and more in real-time