Revisiting Complexity in the Digital Age

As businesses grow and diversify, they almost inevitably make their range of offerings more complex. Complexity brings costs — but smart use of today’s digital technologies can help companies finesse the trade-offs between complexity’s costs and benefits.

Martin Mocker, Peter Weill and Stephanie L. Woerner

June 17, 2014

Imagine a retailer that has 10 million products and hundreds of variations for each product yet keeps it simple for customers to make a choice. Impossible? Not today. Amazon.com Inc. creates value from its product complexity with simple customer-facing processes, such as search, ratings, reviews and suggestions. Now imagine a diversified high-tech company with locally differentiated products ...