We define digital leadership as having practical skills encompassing the ability of an individual to lead or guide other individuals, teams, or entire organizations. 

The main point we are making is that such leadership is impossible without a basic technical understanding of the impact of digital technologies on the business. 

This does not mean that digital leaders should be software developers, system integrators, or advanced data analysts. 

However, they should know what is technically feasible to shape and communicate their vision.

The best example is Sam Walton who built Walmart to be the largest company in the world (in terms of employees) by leveraging the best technologies in logistics, transportation, and analytics. 

Yet, Sam Walton was not an IT genius. He was just very skilled in understanding and communicating how technology can help his business. By the way, if he were alive today, his fortune would have exceeded the fortune of Bill Gates by a factor of 3 or 4. 

Thus, one can argue that there is more value in applying technology than in building it.

The technology cost itself is not a barrier anymore.  The business software industry is getting mature and their products are getting commoditized. Today, we have just three key word processing players with very inexpensive products: Microsoft Word, Apple Pages, and Google Docs. Thirty years ago, there were hundreds of word processing packages and most were very expensive. 

We see the same trend regarding digital marketing/marketing automation, CRM, enterprise resource planning (ERP), and most other business software. 

Thus, a bottleneck to productivity is not the lack of software, or its cost, but a good understanding of their value and leading your organization to leverage them. Just like Sam Walton did.