The scale of change engulfing all business through the pace of technological change is unprecedented. Businesses with new business models which carry high valuations barely existed a decade ago. Changes in shopping habits are fundamentally altering the retail landscape. Social media businesses which were based on communication are becoming commercial behemoths. Most fundamentally of all, within a small cluster of businesses – Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon – the worlds of mobile telephony, tablets, search, social media, news, video and music are coalescing.

This book cannot seek to do justice to the scale and rapidity of change, but for leaders I have chosen to focus on three areas which are of critical importance:

• understanding the nature of change being driven by digital transformation;
• the crucial centrality of digital product development;
• the impact on workplace skills.

Digital business were once separate (especially in the dot.com era). No longer: there isn’t a business which isn’t digital at some level. And so all leaders are digital leaders.