Digitalisation is often misunderstood as the transformation of analog into digital processes or simply as a mere collection of computer-driven technologies. This view falls short of digitalisation’s true disruptive powers and therefore largely results in only incremental transformation. Consequently, many organisations which seem to invest a lot of resources in digitalisation are nevertheless not able to pro-actively exploit digital transformation’s full potential. They will stay continously busy, but still not get ahead of the wave of disruption.

Over the last ten years I have been able to help start-up entrepreneurs, established mid-sized and large multinational companies in their internal efforts to understand digital transformation better, to adapt to new digital market forces and to find opportunites for their individual business model. During 2015 and 2016 I was asked to coordinate the digital transformation efforts of the government of Baden-Württemberg across its many different political fields and ministries as the Head of the Digitalisation Taskforce directly reporting to the state’s prime minister, Herrn Ministerpräsident Kretschmann. For the Hamburg School of Business Administration HSBA, I created a specialised curriculum, The Digital Toolbox, giving its bachelor and master students the chance to delve into the wide field of digital transformation along six focused tracks.