Overview
This course will introduce students to a range of disruptive technological developments, including industry 4.0, artificial intelligence, the cloud, the Internet of things, big data, open innovation, and blockchain technologies. Students will learn about the business and commercial impacts of these developments and how the formation of appropriate strategies can help businesses transform and respond to the opportunities and challenges associated with the digital economy.
The first part of the course will introduce students to a range of emergent technologies and the disruptive effect they are having on business, the economy, and society. In the emergent technology identification assignment submitted midway through the course, students will be required to identify a specific emergent technology and to submit a short video outlining how it could be transformative if deployed within their own organization.
The second part of the course will build on the first part and will help students develop the key elements of a digital transformation plan specific to their organizations. The course will ultimately build towards the submission of a completed digital transformation plan.
This is an integrative course that requires students to bring their knowledge of different functional areas to bear upon a corporate level issue (digital transformation). The course will encourage collaboration between students and will also require individual effort as each transformation plan will be unique. Students considering business process re-engineering, transformation through change in process, transformation through adoption of digital technology, etc., will find this course of particular interest.
Objectives
By the end of this course, students should be able to demonstrate the capacity for digital leadership by:
- assessing the social and economic impacts of particularly disruptive technologies;
- showing an awareness of the digital economy and digital transformation drivers through informed discussion;
- assessing the digital potential of an organization to identify how a new technology could transform an existing business, including a digital gap analysis; and
- completing a digital transformation plan for a business organization.