DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION AND IT CHANGE: POSSIBILITIES AND CHALLENGES

This course focuses on the managerial challenges of managing the processes of digital innovation and digital transformation. While these terms are often used as synonyms, they point at two different processes: digital innovation deals with the introduction of value generating IT in products and services, digital transformation regards the transformative processes that are enabled by IT (SMACIT) to take advantage of digital innovations. The emphasis of the course is on the different levels of management and on the strategic (external) and organizational (internal) challenges that managers face when implementing digital innovation and transformation. The course draws on research on economics, strategy, organizational theory, organizational behaviour to address two core challenges in IT-related change: making change happen and making change valuable. The course focuses therefore on two distinct but interrelated processes of creating a different value for the final customer but also to re-organize the firm accordingly to these digital activities to capitalize on new digital opportunities. For this reason, half of the course will focus on strategic factors and the other half on internal changes. The course will draw on multiple cases that exemplify and highlight the challenges inherent in these two processes. Finally an IT-led change management simulation will be used to ground the use of change management tools.