Architecting Growth in the Digital Era: How to Exploit Enterprise Architecture to Enable Corporate Acquisitions

This book provides the reader with the cognitive keys and practical guidelines to manage acquisitive growth in the digital era. It takes a distinct managerial perspective on acquisitions, with a relentless focus on how Enterprise Architecture (EA) relates to value creation. The book builds upon an extensive fundament of rigorous research, first-hand experiences from using Enterprise Architecture to catalyze acquisitions in several Fortune 500 companies, and a wide pool of case examples from leading firms in the US, Europe and Australia.
The book is divided into three parts. Part I addresses the fundament for the book by decomposing the problem of acquisitive growth and explaining how advance in EA practices have created the potential for mitigating the challenges. Part II then details how an advanced EA capability can contribute to the different phases of an acquisition process. Lastly, Part III provides hands-on guidance on how to implement EA in the acquisition process and concludes with a summary and personal advice from the authors as notes on the journey ahead.
Overall, this book explains how Enterprise Architecture can be used to unlock the value potential in acquisitions without bringing the need for a major organizational restructure. It provides managers, EA professionals, and MBA students with the cognitive keys to characterize the problems and to craft and implement effective solutions.

​Stefan Henningsson is a Professor at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark, where he researches strategic management of IT resources. He has investigated how companies such as Cisco Systems, SAP, AON, Danske Bank, Lego, Maersk Line, and many others manage their growth strategies in the digital era, has published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers in leading academic journals as well as more practitioner-oriented journals, and teaches subjects that include digital transformation and digital platform strategies to executive learners, and IT strategy to master's level students. He is also the coordinator of the IT management master's program and digitalization concentration manager in the Executive MBA program at Copenhagen Business School and a member of the Danish IT Association's council for IT Strategy.
Gustav Normark Toppenberg is an Enterprise Transformation Executive with 20+ years of experience. His background includes building and leading transformational efforts for both small and global companies with a focus on business, data and digital domains. His professional experience includes executive roles in Enterprise Architecture, Lean Agile Product Delivery, Advanced Data & Analytics and M&A at Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Catalina Marketing, Aon Plc and Cisco Systems. His academic experience teaching and publishing practitioner includes roles as an Adjunct Professor at Loyola University Chicago - Quinlan School of Business and as an Adjunct Professor at UC Berkeley in the areas of Advanced Analytics/AI, Emerging Technology, Design Thinking and Lean Agile.