Volkswagen’s Cariad and the Architecture of Impossible Transformation: What Happens When a Manufacturing Giant Tries to Become a Software Company Without Redesigning Itself
Volkswagen invested over €14 billion in Cariad, its centralized software unit, and produced one of enterprise history’s most costly transformation failures. The cause was not strategic misjudgment or a talent gap. It was organizational architecture. This analysis examines why identity-disruptive transformation cannot succeed through capability investment alone, and what governance redesign actually requires before capability investment can succeed.
