The corporate world is littered with cautionary tales of organizations that failed to adapt. Blockbuster, Kodak, BlackBerry. Each had market dominance, talented teams, and resources to spare. What they lacked was the willingness to evolve when the ground shifted beneath them. Marcus East has spent more than two decades helping global organizations avoid that fate, and his new book lays out a playbook for getting it right.
Marcus is an Anglo-American technology executive whose career spans leadership roles at IBM, Apple, Google, National Geographic, T-Mobile, and Autodesk. That breadth of experience across industries and continents gives him an unusual vantage point on what makes digital transformation succeed or stall.
His book, Working with Dinosaurs, draws on that experience to address a problem most executives recognize but few know how to solve: how do you lead an organization through technological upheaval when the people inside it are wired to resist change?
The metaphor is deliberate. Marcus compares legacy-minded organizations to dinosaurs, not as an insult, but as a recognition that size and past success can become liabilities when the environment changes rapidly. The meteor, in this case, is the accelerating wave of cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and automation reshaping every sector of the economy.
Why Do So Many Digital Transformation Efforts Fail?
Most digital transformation initiatives never deliver on their promise. Industry research consistently puts the failure rate above 70 percent. Marcus argues that the reason is not technical. The technology exists. Cloud infrastructure is mature. AI tools are increasingly accessible. The real barrier is human.
Managers protect their turf. Teams cling to familiar workflows. Executives approve transformation budgets but resist the cultural shifts required to make those investments pay off. Marcus has seen this pattern repeat across every type of organization he has worked with, from Silicon Valley startups to multinational enterprises.
Working with Dinosaurs addresses this gap directly. Rather than offering another framework for selecting technology platforms, Marcus focuses on the human mechanics of change. How do you restructure roles when automation eliminates old ones and creates new ones? How do you build a culture where experimentation is rewarded rather than punished? How do you get a senior leadership team to stop talking about digital transformation and start practicing it?
Rethinking the Organization From the Inside Out
One of Marcus’s central arguments is that genuine digital transformation goes far beyond upgrading software. It requires a fundamental rethinking of how an organization is structured, how decisions are made, and how talent is developed.
He draws on his experience leading technology strategy at companies where the stakes were enormous and the timelines were short. At each stop in his career, Marcus encountered the same challenge: talented people trapped inside outdated systems, waiting for permission to innovate. His approach centers on unlocking that talent by redesigning organizational structures, redefining capabilities, and shifting culture from the top down.
Marcus holds a BSc in Management and IT from London Guildhall University and a Master’s in Management from the University of Cambridge. That academic foundation, paired with decades of operational leadership, means he understands digital transformation at both the strategic and tactical level.
A Practical Guide for C-Suite Leaders
Working with Dinosaurs is written specifically for senior executives and board-level leaders who are responsible for steering their organizations through periods of rapid technological change. It is not a theoretical overview or a collection of buzzwords. Marcus provides practical, experience-tested guidance drawn from real-world digital transformation efforts he has led and advised on.
The book also reflects Marcus’s broader philosophy about leadership. He believes that the strongest technology executives are not necessarily the ones who understand every line of code. They are the ones who can inspire teams to move forward into unfamiliar territory. Digital transformation requires courage as much as competence, and the leaders who thrive are those willing to evolve alongside their organizations.
Outside of his professional work, Marcus is an active investor, board advisor, and limited partner for several venture capital funds. He is also a dedicated family man who enjoys traveling, exploring nature, and, perhaps fittingly for someone who writes about evolving beyond old paradigms, spending time as an avid video gamer.
For executives ready to lead their organizations through the next wave of digital transformation, Working with Dinosaurs offers a clear, experienced voice cutting through the noise.
