STATUS INCREASINGLY COMMON Of the companies that have already acquired a digital company, almost two-thirds kept the acquisition as a standalone business. As one Consumer Packaged Goods senior executive put it in a 2017 Accenture roundtable: Our new acquisition is a rock star. Growth through the roof. An agile culture without a lot of cumbersome policies and procedures. It obviously has worked “well for them but is nothing like our culture. Part of the deal made was that we would keep our Large Established Company hands off their culture. So, we have to ‘integrate’ them without really integrating them. They’re easily a tenth of our size—but we’re learning from them. An increasing number of acquiring executive teams are realizing that harvesting the digital and cultural DNA of agile upstarts without making them conform to the legacy culture is of value. However, as acquiring companies begin to look for ways to acquire multiple digital entities, stringing them together to create a new capability and meld the best of all cultures could create a competitive advantage. 8 | M&A: FROM ART TO SCIENCE