A recent survey of directors, CEOs, and senior executives found that digital transformation (DT) risk is their #1 concern in 2019. Yet 70% of all DT initiatives do not reach their goals. Of the $1.3 trillion that was spent on DT last year, it was estimated that $900 billion went to waste. Why do some DT efforts succeed and others fail? Fundamentally, it’s because most digital technologies provide possibilities for efficiency gains and customer intimacy. But if people lack the right mindset to change and the current organizational practices are flawed, DT will simply magnify those flaws. Five key lessons have helped us lead our organizations through digital transformations that succeeded.

The U.S. utility industry may have just experienced its first malicious “cyber event”—or at least the first such event to be reported. In March, an anonymous utility in the Western region of the country filed an “Electric Emergency and Disturbance Report” with the Department of Energy (DOE). The utility stated a “cyber event that causes interruptions of electrical system operations” occurred on March 5 from 9:12 a.m. until 6:57 p.m., in some of its service areas across multiple states. However, no loss of power occurred, and no customers were affected, according to the report.

One of the most common terms used in fiber optic communication systems is transmission windows, yet where did the term come from, why are “windows” important and will they continue to provide the roadmap for how we use fiber optics in the future? To understand the term “window” we need to review the early years of fiber optic technology. The main reason for the use of the term “window” applied to how a fiber span would initially operate at a specific optical frequency (wavelength).