Too often, technology is treated as an implementation detail. Strategy is decided first; technology is brought in later to execute it, accelerate it – or even to try to rescue it.
Outside a small number of digitally native firms, many business leaders still see technology as something to deploy once direction is set, rather than something that shapes what direction is possible in the first place. This strategy-first, tech-later mindset is widespread but the best companies do the opposite. They bring technologists into the strategic conversation early – not to optimise a plan, but to help define it.
The truth is, technological wizardry can’t magically turn a mediocre strategy into a winning one.
Look at the UK banking sector. For years, the big banks announced billion-pound “digital transformation” programmes. Yet what customers saw was slow apps, clunky online services, bots playing “pass the parcel” with inbound callers, and more friction in getting their banking done.
Why? Because digital was treated as an IT project layered onto old ways of doing business. Technology was downstream. Meanwhile, challengers like Monzo and Starling started with technology upstream, designing their entire proposition around what was possible with modern software and mobile platforms. They didn’t “add on” tech. Instead, tech suffused the strategy.
“OK,” you might say, “you’ve cherry-picked an example. Banks were among the earliest adopters of computers back in the 1960s, so it’s understandable if they are groaning under the weight of legacy systems. They’re employing more people than their CFOs would like, for the same reason. Of course fintech challengers can take them on, unencumbered by all that baggage.”
You might say that. But consider the case of DBS in Singapore. Founded in 1968, DBS was the very definition of a legacy institution – bureaucratic, branch-heavy, and carrying all the mainframe baggage of its era. Yet when CEO Piyush Gupta reframed the company’s identity – “we are not a bank, we are a technology company delivering banking services” – DBS proved that legacy wasn’t destiny.
With upstream technology thinking, they overhauled their culture, invested in AI and mobile-first platforms, and embedded digital into every strategic decision. The result was dramatic: multi-fold profit growth, a vastly expanded customer base, and recognition by Euromoney as the “World’s Best Bank.” DBS didn’t escape its legacy by ignoring it; it transformed by refusing to treat technology as an afterthought.
Or to shift to another so-called “legacy” industry, look at Octopus Energy. On the surface, it’s an energy supplier. But its leaders put technology at the very heart of strategy from the outset. They weren’t simply asking, “How can tech help us sell more energy?” They asked, “What kind of company do we become if we design the business around what modern software, data, and automation can enable?”
That upstream thinking turned Octopus into not just an energy retailer, but a global technology platform. Its Kraken operating system now powers utilities around the world – across Europe, North America and Asia – including E.ON, EDF, Origin Energy and Tokyo Gas. In effect, Octopus became a software company with energy as its route to market.
These examples point to the same conclusion: growth comes not from treating technology as a tool of implementation, but from treating it as a co-author of strategy.
Reflection point: As an undergraduate, long before today’s AI hype, I was taught: “Don’t just computerise the existing system.” The principle hasn’t changed. Today’s version is: “Don’t just digitalise your already-written strategy.”
So, where in your organisation is technology still being treated as downstream?