04/24/2025

Lighthouse Lessons

Discover four mindsets to make digital transformation stick

The growth of the Global Lighthouse Network (GLN)—from 16 sites in 2018 to nearly 200 today, across 33 countries and 35 subsectors—underscores the progress leaders have made on the original challenge the GLN identified: integrating advanced technologies at scale to realize significant economic and financial benefits.

The latest Lighthouses, awarded in October 2024 and January 2025, follow the same core principles identified when the network began. Their leaders recognize that what transforms a business is not just a particular technology, or even a unique set of use cases, but the ability of people and processes to use technology to create value across the enterprise.

Accordingly, our analysis finds that Lighthouses resist the temptation to buy into every new technology trend; instead, they invest roughly four times as much in process and people enablers as they do in new technology. For every $2 they spend on tech innovation, Lighthouses earmark $3 for process debt reduction and $5 for scale and adoption. By contrast, we find that most other manufacturers spend closer to one or two times their tech investment on these same enablers.

Please select this link to read the complete article from McKinsey.