The digital grass isn’t greener. It isn’t grass.

Drawing on firsthand experience at both Google and a major German insurance firm, this piece dismantles common misconceptions that traditional enterprises hold about digital companies. It covers eight specific myths: that digital companies are young and small, problem-free, legacy-free, undisciplined, loosely governed, lawless, flush with unlimited funds, and excessive risk-takers. The core argument is that traditional organizations fail at transformation because they project their own constraints onto digital companies rather than understanding that digitals operate under fundamentally different assumptions—high automation, tight harmonization, data-driven decisions, and solution-oriented compliance. The grass isn't greener on the digital side; it's a different substrate entirely.