Summary Digital Business & Transformation
Articles 2022-2023
Includes all cases: Lecture 1-7 & Tutorial 2 & 3
Contents
Week 1: Digital transformation: A multidisciplinary reflection and research agenda (Verhoef et al.)....2
Week 2: The Age of Continuous Connection (Siggelkow & Terwiesch, 2019).........................................7
Week 3: Strategies for two-sided markets (Eisenmann et al., 2006)....................................................10
Week 4: Big Data: The Management Revolution (McAfee & Brynjolfsson, 2012)................................15
Week 5: The Surprising Power of Online Experiments: Getting the Most Out of A/B and Other
Controlled Tests (Kohavi & Thomke, 2017)..........................................................................................18
Week 6: The Problem with Legacy Ecosystems (Wessel, Levie & Siegel, 2016)....................................21
Week 7: (Downes, L., & Nunes, P. (2013). Big bang disruption. Harvard Business Review, 44-56).......24
Tutorial cases........................................................................................................................................27
Tutorial 2: BlaBlaCar, Value creation on a digital platform (Saxena et al., 2020)..............................27
Tutorial 3: Understanding the value and organizational implications of big data analytics: the case
of AUDI AG........................................................................................................................................30
, Week 1: Digital transformation: A multidisciplinary
reflection and research agenda (Verhoef et al.)
Digital transformation = a change in the way a company uses digital technologies, to
develop a new digital business model that helps to create and capture more value for the
company.
- digital transformation is multidisciplinary in nature because it involves changes in
strategy organization, information technology, supply chains and marketing.
- As digital technologies advance, companies are increasingly being confronted with
the need to explore market boundaries and change agent roles.
Digital transformation has fundamentally changed consumer expectations and behaviour, put
pressure on traditional businesses, and disrupted numerous markets.
The flow model (Fig 1) identifies the drivers, phases or levels, and requirements of digital
transformation:
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, There are three major external factors driving the need for digital transformation:
1. Digital technology
- The presence of big data and emerging digital technologies, like Artificial
Intelligence (AI), are expected to have far-reaching effects on business
- the wide entrance of new digital technologies clearly signals the need for firms
to transform their business digitally.
- Moreover, these new digital technologies may also affect the firm’s cost
structure through replacing costlier humans during service delivery with the
help of robots reducing supply chain costs using AI and blockchain.
2. Digital competition
- Due to new digital technologies, competition is changing dramatically
- Big data rich firms (Apple, Amazon, Facebook) are starting to dominate
numerous industries
3. Digital customer behaviour
- Consumers are shifting their purchases to online stores
- Consumer behaviour is changing as a response to the digital revolution
- When firms cannot adapt to the digital changes, they become less attractive to
customers likely to be replaced by firms that do leverage such digital
technologies.
The phases of digital transformation
The article identifies three phases of digital transformation: digitization, digitalization, and
digital transformation. Most of the literature endorses that the first two more incremental
phases are needed to achieve the most pervasive/penetrating phase of digital
transformation.
1. Digitization
- Digitization is the process of encoding analog information into a digital format (i.e.,
into zeros and ones) so that computers can store, process, and transmit such
information.
- Digitization primarily digitalises internal and external documentation processes.
2. Digitalization
- Digitization primarily describes internal describes how IT or digital technologies
can be used to change existing business processes
- In digitalization, IT serves as a key enabler to seize new business possibilities by
changing existing business processes, such as communication
- Companies apply digital technologies to optimize existing business processes by
enabling more efficient coordination between processes, and/or by creating
additional value for the customer by improving the user experience. For example,
cost savings as well as enhanced customer experiences.
3. Digital transformation
- Digital transformation is the most penetrating/pervasive phase, describing an
enterprise-wide change that leads to the development of new business models
- This can help achieve a competitive advantage by transforming the organization
to leverage existing core competencies or develop new ones.
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