For companies and their executives who are struggling to adapt to digital disruption, three PwC experts have a simple recommendation: embrace it, and learn from it.

The trio writes in a recent strategy+business article – “10 Principles for Winning the Game of Digital Disruption”— that embracing new digital paradigms can help you successfully compete against upstarts that often introduce those new technologies in the first place.

“When you first hear about a new digitally enabled competitor, you may tell yourself that the company can’t succeed. It’s operating in a narrow niche and it won’t be profitable at scale,” they write. “Hundreds of executives of established companies have made this mistake.”

They recommend instead looking at each upstart competitor “as a company you can learn from.”

The piece points out that a new upstart often argues it can meet customer needs better than established rivals, offer lower prices and/or work more efficiently. It is in an executive’s best interest to figure out what is behind the rival’s logic, and use that knowledge to make your company’s systems and capabilities run even better than the upstart rival.

“Keep in mind what you know digital technology can do for you,” they note. “How could you redesign your capabilities to deliver better value than your competitors can? What aspects of your current model could you change to deliver better value, on a grand scale, than any upstart could?”

For the full article, click here.