The digital transformation of industrial players

Digitalization is transforming the industrial landscape. Smarter products, data-based services, and new business models promise to reshape the whole manufacturing industry. But just below the visible excitement lurk unexpected tensions and challenges that can make digital transformation an excruciating journey for industrial companies. In this article, we decipher the digital transformation strategy choices of leading industrial firms in a highly innovative country. We then identify four dominant tensions that managers need to sort out. We also provide guiding principles for selecting a digital transformation strategy capable of overcoming each of the identified tensions.     

From AI to digital transformation: The AI readiness framework

Strategies and means for selecting and implementing digital technologies that realize firms’ goals in digital transformation have been extensively investigated. The recent surge in artificial intelligence (AI) technologies has amplified the need for such investigation, as they are being increasingly used in diverse organizational practices, creating not only new opportunities for digital transformation but also new challenges for managers of digital transformation processes. In this article, I present a framework intended to assist efforts to address one of the first of these challenges: assessment of organizational AI readiness—that is, an organization’s ability to deploy AI technologies to enable digital transformation, in four key dimensions: technologies, activities, boundaries, and goals. I show that this framework can facilitate analysis both of an organization’s current sociotechnical AI status and of the prospects for the technology’s fuller value-adding, sociotechnical deployment. The AI readiness framework invites fuller theorizing of the roles that AI can—and will—play in digital transformation.     

Business strategy and the management of digital marketing

The internet brought disruptive change to the business landscape through the creation of a whole host of digital marketing tactics. But with these new tactical options has come the need for marketing managers to (1) prioritize what they wish to accomplish and (2) determine which digital marketing tactics to invest in. We consider these issues from the perspective of four business strategies: prospectors, analyzers, low-cost defenders, and differentiated defenders. In this article, we provide marketing managers with insights into how businesses pursuing various strategies approach these digital marketing issues, with the ultimate goal being to assist managers in the efficient and effective implementation of their firm’s adopted strategy.     

Competing in digital ecosystems

Digital technologies are revolutionizing traditional interdependencies among businesses. As a result, managers have begun to recognize their business environments as digital ecosystems. For firms accustomed to framing their business environments as industries, this represents a significant shift in perspective—one that requires an understanding of fresh strategic initiatives necessary to compete in the digital era. In this article, we highlight what is new and different about digital ecosystems for firm strategy. We offer frameworks that explain how digital ecosystems provide firms with new sources of value and new avenues for growth. Two sets of underlying concepts govern these frameworks: (1) production and consumption ecosystems and (2) digital envelopes and product-in-use information. We introduce and elaborate upon these foundational concepts and highlight new strategic options for firms to compete in digital ecosystems.     

Creating an innovative digital project team: Levers to enable digital transformation

Digital transformation encompasses an organization's ability to adapt, respond, and position itself for success in the face of rapid technology evolution. A critical structure in achieving successful digital transformation is the digital project team, yet there is little research on how they are created and developed. Much of the focus has been on agile methodologies and processes but there is less research to inform organizations on digital team dynamics such as roles, empowerment, learning, and leadership development. This article describes our findings from a multilevel study of the IT function of 60 companies, including fieldwork at five company sites involving more than 130 semistructured interviews with senior level IT professionals. We identify four essential team-based levers that enable digital transformation: (1) diverse and targeted team composition, (2) iterative goal setting, (3) continuous learning, and (4) talent management. Using company examples and practices, we describe how digital leaders are using these levers to propel their organizations forward in the journey toward digital transformation.     

Managing for competency with innovation change in higher education: Examining the pitfalls and pivots of digital transformation

Digital transformation recently converged on organizations as a new paradigm—a must-have exemplar—to enable competitive advantage. While the effects of digital transformation and their analytics, along with platform technologies, are becoming pronounced in companies, there is still a need to examine their implications on higher education. In light of the dynamics of digital transformation, how can higher education better manage the shift toward newer competencies and the need for innovation presented by the emergence of digital technologies? In this article, I examine the issues around the need for this balance—often defined in strategy as ambidexterity, or the need to address both competency with innovation—by outlining the historical trajectories that led to this problem in higher education, identifying three common pitfalls that higher education programs and administrators face, and tying these issues to higher education’s absorptive capacity. To resolve these pitfalls, this article builds upon absorptive capacity frameworks for education practitioners and strategies as a prospective change management tool.     

Customer-based execution strategy in a global digital economy

Multinational corporations (MNCs) are continuing to invest more in expanding into new markets around the world. These firms are faced with determining the optimal go-to-market strategy in these heterogeneous new markets to attract and retain profitable customers. This paper provides an organizing framework to help firms develop profitable customer-level strategies across countries in the digital environment. We start by providing a summary of the marketing literature on a customer-based execution strategy. Next, we discuss how the evolving digital landscape is affecting firms’ relationships with customers and describe some of the current digital product and process innovations in the marketplace. We discuss boundary conditions for how these digital product and process innovations might affect profitable customer strategies in a global context. In addition, we discuss implementation challenges that MNCs will likely face in deploying these customer-level strategies and other stakeholders (outside of customers) that will likely play a role in the execution of these customer-level strategies. Finally, we summarize set of research questions to guide future research on customer-level strategies in a global digital context.     

Designing an emotional strategy: Strengthening digital channel engagements

The emergence of new technologies has revolutionized the way companies interact and build relationships with customers. The channel–customer relationship has traditionally been managed via a push approach in communication (“What can we sell customers?”) with the hope of cultivating customer loyalty. However, emotional understandings of customers and how they feel about a product, service, or business can drastically alter consumers’ engagement, behavior, and purchasing preferences. This rapidly evolving landscape has left managers at a loss, and what they are experiencing is likely the beginning of a tectonic shift in the way digital channels are designed, monitored, and managed. In this article, digital channel relationships are examined, and useful concepts for clarifying and refining the emotional meaning behind company strategy and their relationship to corresponding digital channels are detailed. Using three case study examples, we discuss the process and impact of such emotionally aware digital channel designs. Recommendations are made regarding how companies can select, design, and maintain digital engagements based on their strategy and industry needs.     

Do myriad e-channels always create value for customers? A dynamic analysis of the perceived value of a digital information product during the usage phase

The academic literature generally asserts that omnichannel strategies create value throughout the customer journey based on the principle of synergy between channels. However, such strategies may appear complex to customers, notably when they face myriad e-channels that constitute all means of accessing the offer. Specifically, for digital information products, such as those of the press, digitalized content is now consumed through multiple e-channels. Our study aims to investigate the impact of e-channel combinations on the perceived value of a digital information product during the usage phase. We hypothesize that the similarity between the e-channels used by customers has a negative impact on the perceived value model. To test the research hypotheses, we conducted a longitudinal study of the readers of a digital version of an international newspaper. The results demonstrate that the similarity of e-channels impedes value creation. Our findings reintroduce a more ambivalent vision of the omnichannel strategy in a digital environment and provide insights into how managers should support customers by clarifying the usefulness of each e-channel proposed.     

Digital transformation: Five recommendations for the digitally conscious firm

Digital transformation is one of the key challenges facing contemporary businesses. The need to leverage digital technology to develop and implement new business models forces firms to reevaluate existing capabilities, structures, and culture in order to identify what technologies are relevant and how they will be enacted in organizational processes and business offerings. More often than not, these profound changes require firms to revisit old truths as they develop strategies that thread the needle between beneficial innovation and harmful disruption. This article uses the Internet of Things (IoT) as a backdrop to demonstrate the concerns associated with transformative technologies and offers five recommendations as to how firms can develop the strategies needed for digital transformation and become digitally conscious: (1) Start small and build on firsthand benefits; (2) team up and create competitive advantage from brand recognition; (3) engage in standardization efforts; (4) take responsibility for data ownership and ethics; and (5) own the change and ensure organization-wide commitment. As such, this article shows that digital transformation should be a top management priority and a defining trait of corporate business strategy, and that by becoming digitally conscious, firms may get a head start on their transformation journey.     

Digital marketing and social media: Why bother?

Changes in consumer behavior require firms to rethink their marketing strategies in the digital domain. Currently, a significant portion of the associated research is focused more on the customer than on the firm. To redress this shortcoming, this study adopts the perspective of the firm to facilitate an understanding of digital marketing and social media usage as well as its benefits and inhibitors. The second generation of Internet-based applications enhances marketing efforts by allowing firms to implement innovative forms of communication and co-create content with their customers. Based on a survey of marketing managers, this article shows that firms face internal and external pressures to adopt a digital presence in social media platforms. Firms’ digital marketing engagement can be categorized according to perceived benefits and digital marketing usage. To improve digital marketing engagement, marketers must focus on relationship-based interactions with their customers. This article demonstrates how some firms are already accomplishing just that.     

Making a first impression as a start-up: Strategies to overcome low initial trust perceptions in digital innovation adoption

High failure rates of digital innovations by start-ups indicate that consumers' initial trust perceptions are make-or-break for their survival. Hence, start-ups have to design adequate business models to manage consumers' initial trust perceptions of digital innovations. Five experiments explore how start-ups can signal trustworthiness in order to overcome low initial trust perceptions and boost adoption. We find three specific design strategies of start-ups' digital business models – customer ratings, benefit communication, and revenue model – to be effective to overcome low initial trust perceptions and to increase adoption of digital innovations. The findings demonstrate that initial trust serves as a critical mediator in the relationship between these design strategies and consumers' adoption intentions. Additionally, the chosen revenue model has differential effects on privacy concerns, which mediate the relationship between revenue model and initial trust. The present empirical insights help start-ups to craft business model design strategies for successful digital innovation launch.     

Solving the crisis of immediacy: How digital technology can transform the customer experience

Marketers are currently facing a ‘crisis of immediacy’ challenge: how to meet consumers’ need to receive content, expertise, and personalized solutions in real time during their shopping experience. Today's digital technologies—such as video conferencing, location-based mobile apps, and augmented reality—provide a highly personalized and immersive environment that allows for interactivity and rich information exchange between the brand and consumer. We conducted in-depth interviews with over 35 retailers, large-scale surveys with international shoppers, and pilot projects with stores and banking institutions to study how companies are leveraging digital technologies to transform the customer experience. Our findings show that there are two main technology-based models that organizations are deploying to support customers’ immediate needs: the remote expert and the digital assistant. We provide company examples of both models, as well as when they are most appropriate and success factors to inform managers.     

程控交换机全数字音信号及多频信号设计方法

本文以新型数字交换机系统为背景,提出了全数字音信号和多频互控信号的设计方法。讨论了电路原理、编码方式,电平设计和脉冲信号的时序关系。最后给出了电原理图和试验数据结果。     

Theorising digital personhood: a dramaturgical approach

This paper reports on findings from a study which investigates our digital identities. Through examination of the process of constructing biographical films derived from users’ social media (SM) data, we progress understanding of the digital self. Building on dramaturgical understandings of performance of self, we challenge the dominant views which argue that SM users operating as their ‘authentic selves’ can be empowered by having the potential for contemporaneous multiple selves. Through the introduction of the concepts of SM leakage and multiple temporal selves, we note the challenge of living with these digital self-representations which are sustained over time. We propose strategies for dealing with temporal shifts, as well as dispensing with the notion of the separation of these selves.     

Factors that influence new generation candidates to engage with and complete digital,AI-enabled recruiting

Recruiting talent has moved from a tactical HR activity to a strategic business priority. This has been driven by shifts in the source of firm value and competitive advantage and the critical role of human capital in those shifts. Technological advances have moved digital, AI-enabled recruiting from a peripheral curiosity to a critical capability. However, we know little about candidates' reactions to AI-enabled recruiting. Consequently, in this study, we examine the role of social media use, intrinsic rewards, fair treatment, and perceived trendiness on the intentions of prospective employees to engage with and complete digital, AI-enabled recruiting processes. The positive relationships between these factors and candidates' engagement with AI-enabled recruiting have several important practical implications for managers. We also examine the larger implications and make general recommendations to firms about using AI-enabled recruiting technology and tools.     

Managerial work in the realm of the digital universe: The role of the data triad

With the explosion of the digital universe, it is becoming increasingly important to understand how organizational decision making (i.e., the business-oriented perspective) is intertwined with an understanding of enterprise data assets (i.e., the data-oriented perspective). This article first compares the business- and data-oriented perspectives to describe how the two views mesh with each other. It then presents three elements in the data-oriented perspective that are collectively referred to as the data triad: (1) use, (2) design and storage, and (3) processes and people. In describing the data triad, this article highlights practices, architectural techniques, and example tools that are used to manage, access, analyze, and deliver data. By presenting different elements of the data-oriented perspective, this article broadly and concretely describes the data triad and how it can play a role in the redefined scope of work for data-driven business managers.     

Avoiding digitalization traps: Tools for top managers

Digital transformation is fundamentally changing the business landscape. It is also affecting the roles of top managers within firms. Our survey of more than 160 senior managers in Europe suggests that digitalization, rather than encouraging more decentralized forms of management, will lead to an expanded role for headquarters and further empowerment of top managers. While acknowledging the benefits of the digital transformation, in this Executive Digest we identify five key challenges for newly empowered top managers and offer solutions for these digitalization traps.     

一种快速全数字锁相环

本文根据突发式数字通信快速锁相要求,提出一种位同步信号提取的新的快速全数字锁相环方案.它比一般数字锁相环捕捉速度最大可以提高N/2倍,且环路的同步时间与量化相位误差的矛盾也得到了解决,因而环路精度也大有改善.本文主要以一阶环为例讨论位同步信号提取.