Ausgrid, the largest electricity network in Australia, bought the country’s largest digital metering business, saying the “acquisition provides a solid platform to grow [its] significant metering footprint.”5 The marketing industry saw a 20 percent jump in the number of deals involving digital marketing capabilities in the first half of 2016—with cumulative deal value skyrocketing 6 288 percent. It’s not that companies are no longer acquiring for the traditional business reasons those deals will always have an important place in M&A. It’s just that digital needs are fast rivaling traditional reasons in spurring M&A events. Our research shows that acquiring new capabilities (43 percent) and the need for next-gen technologies (42 percent) are on par with traditional triggers such as expanding into geographic markets or industries (both 42 percent: see Figure 2). 6 | M&A: FROM ART TO SCIENCE