What sets Champions apart? To maximize their scaling efforts, they’ve developed a muscle memory reflected and supported by their structure and organization.

Action #1: Define the value that will guide innovation efforts

Champions know that if their goal is not clearly defined, they are more likely to try to scale digital pilots that don’t have the organizational backbone to succeed. They assess the opportunities before them, and, at the senior-most levels, narrow in on the market problems they want to pursue. Then they direct their innovation efforts to secure expected returns.

Action #2: Focus on internal organizational change and external digital value

Too often, there is a divide between what a company is trying to scale for customers and the technologies supporting the efforts. This gap can cause delays or unexpected bursts of internal change.

Champions across discrete and process industries blend organizational change and digital transformation initiatives, creating what we call an ambidextrous organization. Managers and employees never fall into a learning curve that is too steep. Instead, they become accustomed to the climb, and to the collaboration and flexibility it demands.

In fact, 62.2 percent of Champion discrete manufacturers are keen to embrace this ambidextrous approach at an enterprise level, while 52.9 percent of other discrete manufacturers are. Meanwhile, 63.5 percent of Champion process industry leaders are keen to embrace an ambidextrous approach at an enterprise level, while 54.8 percent of other process industries leaders are.

For Champions, ambidexterity enables an organization that continuously uses rapidly maturing digital technologies to grow its core and taps emerging technologies to develop and scale new endeavors.

Action #3: Build in-house innovation factories with targeted influence

When it’s time to scale a successful pilot that’s been developed by an autonomous entity, Champions recognize the enormity of integrating rapidly advancing technologies, along with talent and assets, back into the larger organization. They seed and grow new digital innovations organically within organizational boundaries.

They bring in new talent, but also integrate and develop existing talent as they go. They keep the new group linked to, and accountable to, the company’s profit and losses so they can preview the effect of scaling a proof of concept on the larger organization.

Action #4: Find out what enables innovation in each business function

In the end, how do you make innovation work? In short, companies can put “enablers” to work— from software applications for supporting operations to platforms for capturing and analyzing data. We found some from the second group (Contenders) —and even the third (Cadets)—select the same types of enablers as their Champion peers to facilitate innovation. However, Champions alone are masters at matching the support to the function that needs it most and will use it best.

For example, Champions have redefined their ecosystem partnerships (by adding new partners or rewiring existing relationships) to ensure that they have access to the digital talent they need from product design to scaling. Many Chinese organizations are adept this kind of “iterative innovation,” Zhu Hengyuan, Associate Professor and Vice Chair at Department of Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Strategy, School of Economics & Management, Tsinghua University, tells us.

“To begin with, they introduce a minimum viable product or service into smaller markets,” Zhu says. “They gather feedback from customers and partners in the innovation value chain. Based on this feedback they initiate the next round of product innovation—many times with stakeholders in the ecosystem. In this way, they evolve the product or service very quickly and sustainably.” Companies in China keep a sharp eye on the context in which their products and services are to be sold, Zhu says.

“They focus on innovating at a speed that can help them roll out products and services relevant to that context,” Zhu says, whether it’s internal to the company, such as the manufacturing context or supply chain context, or external, such as the emergence of new markets.

Haier calls its operating model “rendanheyi”—ren, in Chinese, refers to the employees, dan means user value, and heyi indicates unity and an awareness of the whole system.

In the era of tech-driven innovation, many industrial companies are still grappling with transitioning to digital. To survive and thrive, they must catch up—quickly. They’ll need the right tools and teams to get up to speed at all levels throughout their organizations, from the top down.

The good news? While most of the Champions in our research made decisions years ago that positioned them where they are today, other companies can get on track. They can immediately identify and articulate the value spaces they want to capture, instead of launching shotgun-style innovation or scaling efforts.

And senior managers can identify a team, under the leadership of a C-suite executive, to assess how well the company is equipped with appropriate platforms, technologies, skills and ecosystem partners to support scaling successful pilots. Like the global sportswear manufacturer that couldn’t ramp up production fast enough, companies can’t afford to wait to bridge the digital gaps before innovating at scale. They must unify around testing and scaling across the board. To succeed, they’ll have to be as innovative internally as they aspire to be for their customers.