My first book, ‘Bits, Bytes, and Barrels: The Digital Transformation of Oil and Gas’, set out the business case for the oil and gas industry to adopt digital innovations to lower costs and improve asset productivity. It described a way for oil and gas companies to develop digital strategy, but was relatively light on the how of digital adoption, reflecting the industry’s relatively low level of adoption.

‘Carbon, Capital, and the Cloud: A Playbook for Digital Oil and Gas’ picks up the story where ‘Bits, Bytes, and Barrels’ ended, with the current state of the industry, the rapidly evolving technologies, the emerging business models, and the pressures on change management. To make the book practical, it includes nine case studies of companies drawn from across the oil and gas industry who are moving ahead with digital adoption.

I believe every company working in oil and gas, and energy more broadly, can find their own version of the sweet spot, and claim it for their own. It’s not too late. The real challenge is not even technical, but rather the gap between our ability to innovate and the pace by which we can help people adopt innovation. The winners are going to be those that figure out how to close that gap, at scale.