Patterns of Digitization

This work describes the collaborative efforts conducted at the Center of innovation Management Studies (CIMS) located at the Poole College of Management, NC State University and FIR Institute for Industrial Management at RWTH Aachen University, to understand the gap that exists between the practice of digital transformation and the coverage of this phenomena in the literature. On January 5, 2017, at the Hawaiian international Conference of System Science (HICSS50), the authors hosted a World Café exercise as part of their workshop, titled Digital transformation: Research Challenges and Priorities for the Future. In the World Café over 50 participants enthusiastically helped frame a multi-year, multi-discipline, Digital Transformation Research Roadmap to help organize and guide studies into the many facets of digital transformation. Read More

We first studied the phenomenon of digital transformation through an extensive survey of global organizations. Called the Patterns of Digitization, the survey examined every aspect of how digital transformation is implemented. We looked at over 500 companies' business strategies, resource allocation, design practices, and looked at their “softer” side, like how the leaders actually communicate with employees.  We presented the preliminary results at the 2019 IEEE International Conference on Engineering, Technology and Innovation (ICE/ITMC) at Sophia Antipolis Innovation Park, FRANCE.  Read More

The differentiated actions that digitally mature companies take to digitally transform their businesses are published in our article "Patterns of Digitization: A Practical Guide to Digital Transformation" in Research-Technology Management.  Read More

Digital Leadership matters. At the 2020 IEEE International Conference on Engineering, Technology and Innovation, we presented Digital Leadership: Character and Competency differentiates Digitally Mature Organizations Leaders. We show how the character and competency of these leaders help set them and their organizations apart. Our intention was not to laud Digitally Mature leaders, as it was to help lagging companies grasp what is truly involved in implementing a digital transformation and what they need to do to catch up. This has been our "modus operandi" from the beginning.  Read More

But just exhorting digital leaders to show more character and demonstrate their competency with digital technologies, is still not enough. To really help them (read you) we needed to go deeper. Our Book Trust: The Winning Formula for Digital Leaders helps you become a more successful digital leader—and maybe a better person. The jewel of this book is its in-depth interviews with proven, successful digital leaders. We asked them "how specifically" they build trust through their intentions, integrity, capabilities and results. Of course, these are the “four core values” of Stephen M.R. Covey's Speed of Trust framework and the basis of the book’s 20-question Interview Guide. Read More

The human dimensions of leaders play a central role in transformational processes, as they have the opportunity to directly or indirectly influence decisive variables. In this article presented at the 2021 IEEE International Conference on Engineering, Technology, and Innovation, we highlight the results of interviews with 13 digital leaders who have successfully implemented the necessary changes for the digital transformation of their companies. The results of the interviews provide key dimensions for leaders to digitally transform their companies. Read More

Digital Leaders' human dimensions are the essence of digital transformation success.  We identify 15 key dimensions of digital leadership that are key to digital transformation success and develop a scale to measure them.

Given the urgency and importance of digital transformation and the critical role digital leaders play in successful execution, we are currently creating a self-assessment tool that measures these 15 key dimensions.

We emphasize the term self-assessment because it is intended to provide leaders inspiration to reflect and improve aspects of their leadership based on science―and not, based on somebody else’s expectations of them. We also intend to make the self-assessment tool available for free to anyone leading a digital initiative – be it at the project, function, business unit, or company level.  

We are also developing self-training aids that enable digital leaders to develop or acquire deficit resources and/or skills to make a lasting change.