Digital business success will require organisations to take bold actions, including inventing new business models and changing the way they function, according to Gartner.
By 2017, 70 percent of successful digital business models will rely on deliberately unstable processes designed to shift with customers' needs.
"Many organisations are either beginning, or in the midst of, digital business transformation initiatives," says Julie Short, research director, Gartner.
"We expect that only 30 percent of these efforts will succeed. To be part of that 30 percent, business and IT leaders must be ready and willing to innovate rapidly from a business model, business process and technology perspective."
As a result of business model innovation, some business processes must become deliberately unstable.
Deliberately unstable processes are designed for change and can dynamically adjust to customers' needs - they are vital because they are agile, adaptable and "supermanoeuvrable" as customers' needs shift.
According to Short, they are also competitive differentiators, because they support customer interactions that are unpredictable and require ad hoc decision making to enable larger, more stable processes to continue.
"It's imperative to break away from linear business processes and deploy a spectrum of standardized and variable processes to reap the benefits of digital business," Short adds.
"The need for this shift is intensified by the introduction of many types of internet-connected 'things' into the business environment.
"Things like smart machines generate real-time information for other machines. Business processes must be designed for change to enable organisations to exploit this information.