A Digital Economy to Develop Policy Related to Transport and Logistics. Predictive Lessons from Russia

This paper aims to explain how the digital economy might unfold new possibilities for optimizing the transport and logistics complex in Russia. This paper develops a new conceptual scenario model and a unique algorithm to show that investing in digital technologies is a critical move in Russia. Blockchain, Big Data, the Internet of Things, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence would be strengthened by ample access to finance, technology availability, government support, and consumers' preferences. Although this paper makes use of Russia’s system data where the contribution of transport and logistics in the GDP growth could reach 15–20 % by 2020, our findings may have applicability beyond the Russian case and definitively matter in a broader context of Eastern Europe and Central Asia.     

Growth paths for overcoming the digitalization paradox

Despite the demonstrated opportunities for revenue enhancement through digitalization, companies often experience a digitalization paradox. This paradox suggests that although companies may invest in digitalization, they often fail to achieve the expected revenue enhancement. In reporting research on 52 companies, we make the following four contributions: First, we focus on industrial companies in the business-to-business context, which largely have been neglected in previous research on digitalization. Second, we introduce the digitalization paradox as an important phenomenon in the discussion of revenue enhancement through digitalization. Third, we describe three growth paths: (1) commercializing digital solutions, (2) utilizing product connectivity, and (3) establishing an IoT-platform-based application business. For each growth path, the article takes a dynamic perspective on business models, highlighting triggers and modifications in business-model components (including value proposition, value-creation activities, and profit equation). Fourth, while the described modifications require initial investments to let these growth paths develop, we highlight how growth traps can prevent investments in business-model modifications from leading to revenue enhancement and how they can ultimately lead to the digitalization paradox.     

Smartphones and the reconfiguration of retailscapes: Stores,shopping, and digitalization

The aim of this paper is to examine and conceptualize how the integration of smartphones is reconfiguring the retailscapes of stores and the implications that this has for retailers and consumers. Departing from an understanding of retailscapes as socio-material assemblages and drawing on an ethnographic study of mobile shopping, this paper shows how the integration of smartphones into the activities of in-store shopping is reconfiguring how store space is enacted. The integration of this digital device reorganizes the activities of shopping, and new informationscapes, socialscapes, and experiencescapes unfold as a result. In the process, stores are reconfigured, agencies change, and the relationship between consumers and retailers is remade.     

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.     

The digitalization triumvirate: How incumbents survive

In an era of increasing technological transformation, the lines among industries, competitors, and companies are blurring as firms and platforms combine to create unique methods for engagement. Survival and growth in a rapidly changing marketplace require incumbent companies to divest themselves of legacy thinking and to embrace internal innovation that adds value for both channel members and customers. This entails understanding the mechanisms of process digitalization, communications digitalization, and buyer digitalization. It requires incumbent firms to build and innovate on strengths currently possessed in-house and to identify and cover resource gaps. Incumbents also must work to overcome organizational inertia and effectively implement an agile approach for digitalization across the company, channels, and customer triumvirate. In sum, incumbents must: (1) consider and embrace gains from the digitalization of process, communications, and buyer; (2) respect the core business while recognizing that elements of the existing business model must adapt to changing channels and customer expectations; and (3) recognize that digitalization comes in many forms with multiple applications.     

Extending the international new venture phenomenon to digital platform providers: A longitudinal case study

People increasingly interact with services enabled by digital platforms. This has been a consequence of the digitalization of artifacts, which has transmuted traditional businesses into digital forms. With the increasing digitalization and modularization of services, digital platforms have given many digital service providers possibilities to scale globally, and to rapidly transcend national borders by serving multi-sided markets. However, we still know very little about how digital platform providers actually internationalize their services, or how they make their platforms available for global markets. In this paper, we contribute to the increasing literature on digital-based INVs, examining how firms of this type internationalize their services, and more specifically, how recent technological developments have shaped the firms’ internationalization processes. Drawing on concepts from the network approach to internationalization, resource dependency theory, and INV theory, we extend the scope of INV theory via a model that encompasses the internationalization process of digital platform providers. We report on a longitudinal case study of a digital platform provider (covering the period 2000–2017), which allowed us to gain in-depth insight into the INV phenomenon.     

Digitalization and economic growth: A comparative analysis of Sub-Saharan Africa and OECD economies

This paper examines the contribution of digitalization to economic growth of Sub Saharan Africa (SSA) in comparison with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) economies. The main reason for comparing the most and the least developed countries to measure the effects of digitalization is to have an insight of whether such effects depend on the levels of development of the country. New technologies in Sub Saharan Africa are assumed to have played significant roles in economic activity, including accessibility of communications, which was impeded by poor infrastructure, accommodation of the poor majority who were initially financially excluded from mobile banking and participation of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in e-commerce. On the other hand, due to the effects of digitalization, least developed countries in SSA have been facing a premature deindustrialization.This study employs a panel dataset consisting of 11 years from 2006 to 2016 for 41 SSA and 33 OECD economies and we use the generalized linear methods of moments (GMM) estimators. The results show that digitalization has a positive contribution to economic growth in both groups of countries. The effect of broadband internet is minimal for SSA compared to OECD countries, whereas the impact of mobile telecommunications is higher in SSA compared to the OECD counterpart. These results are particularly interesting as less advanced technologies create more opportunities in the least developed countries since there is more space for improvement. With respect to policy implications, this study recommends that SSA governments should invest more in ICT along with other infrastructures, so as to benefit from digitalization and to realize significant economic growth.     

数字化对制造业全球价值链竞争力的影响——来自中国制造业行业的经验证据

数字化是新时期提升制造业GVC竞争力的有效路径。系统梳理数字化影响制造业GVC竞争力的理论机制,并利用2000—2014年中国制造业面板数据进行实证检验。结果表明,制造业数字化通过成本效应、配置效应和协同效应促进GVC竞争力提升;样本考察期内,中国制造业GVC竞争力整体呈不断上升趋势,且基本稳定在前10行列,并以中低知识密集度行业竞争力最强;数字化整体上有利于GVC竞争力提升,分行业看,数字化对中低和中高知识密集度行业的GVC竞争力有显著促进作用;分投入来源看,国际数字化投入比国内数字化投入的促进效果更显著;分投入类型看,软件和信息技术服务业的促进效果最突出。结论可为制造企业制定数字化转型及GVC竞争力提升策略提供参考。