How Digital Twins Improve Strategy Execution
How digital twins enhance strategy execution by creating real-time, adaptive models that keep businesses aligned and responsive in a changing world.
Published
March 10, 2025
How Digital Twins Bring Strategy to Life
In a world where business agility is no longer optional, organizations must find ways to bridge the gap between strategic vision and real-world execution. It’s no good unveiling a shiny new strategy, if execution falls flat. One of the biggest challenges is that this execution is complex. It is filled with moving parts and uncertainties that make it difficult to anticipate how everything will unfold.
For instance, many companies struggle to anticipate how operational challenges will impact execution, leading to delays, misalignment, and wasted resources. This is where situational awareness becomes critical - leaders need the ability to detect risk before it leads to failure, ensuring strategies remain viable as conditions change.
To bridge this execution gap, businesses need new tools that allow them to predict challenges, test solutions, and iterate before committing. This is where digital twins come in – a technology that has revolutionized industries from manufacturing to urban planning and is now poised to make waves in strategy execution, helping organizations visualize, test, and refine their approach before acting.
Much like how engineers use digital twins to model and stress-test infrastructure before breaking ground, businesses can now apply the same principles to strategy execution. Rather than relying on static plans, they can create a living, dynamic model of their organization – one that evolves and responds in real time, ensuring execution stays aligned with strategic intent.
At In Parallel, we call this innovation the Parallel Twin – an advanced digital twin concept that enables businesses to execute strategy with precision, speed, and adaptability.
What Digital Twins Strategy Execution Really Means
A digital twin is a dynamic, real-time model of a system that mirrors its real-world counterpart. In engineering, digital twins simulate physical assets. In business, the same principle can apply to operations, workflows, and decision structures.
An organizational digital twin connects:
Strategic objectives
Active initiatives
Risks and dependencies
Decisions and ownership
Real-time progress signals
Instead of viewing strategy as a static document, a digital twin turns it into a living system — continuously updated as work happens.
This shift is critical. Because strategy doesn’t fail due to lack of ambition. It fails when visibility disappears between planning and execution.
We’ve taken the concept of digital twins further with our Parallel Twin. This approach provides a virtual model of an organization’s operating environment, decision-making frameworks, and strategic initiatives, offering leaders real-time visibility into both internal execution and external market dynamics. By continuously monitoring shifts in competitive landscapes, regulatory changes, and broader industry trends, the Parallel Twin ensures businesses can adapt their strategies in response to external forces as well as internal priorities. This, in turn, enables organizations to enable businesses to move beyond static plans and execute Adaptive Strategies.
Traditional strategic planning tools often exist in silos and rely on outdated information, but the Parallel Twin integrates real-time data to provide a continuously updated view of an organization’s performance. It can simulate multiple scenarios, allowing businesses to test strategies before committing to a course of action. Beyond optimizing execution, it also helps leaders prioritize their next steps - ensuring focus is placed on the most impactful decisions rather than reacting to noise. This ultimately enhances decision-making agility, giving leaders and teams the tools to adapt and align on execution in real-time.
Why Digital Twins Matter for Strategy Execution
Digital Twins vs. Traditional Execution Models
Practical Example: A Digital Twin of Execution
Imagine a portfolio initiative spanning five departments.
Without a digital twin:
Updates sit in separate decks
Risks surface late
Leaders piece together reality manually
With a digital twin:
Risks are connected to affected initiatives
Decisions update ownership instantly
Progress shifts are visible across teams
Dependencies are mapped in real time
The organization doesn’t just track execution. It sees the system evolve.
Strategic Alignment FAQs
What is a digital twin in business?
A digital twin in business is a real-time, dynamic model of an organization’s operations, initiatives, and decision structures. It mirrors how strategy is executed across teams and systems.
How do digital twins improve strategy execution?
They provide continuous visibility into progress, risks, and dependencies, allowing leaders to identify misalignment early and adjust proactively.
Is an organizational digital twin realistic today?
Yes. With modern systems that integrate strategic planning, portfolio management, and execution data, organizations can create a shared, real-time execution model.