Chapter 1: Understanding Digital Transformation in the Changing Business Environment

Digitalisation refers to ‘the pace of change in a society driven by digital technological development, involving multiple technologies at different stages of maturity that will converge and create new technologies’ (McAfee, 2009). ‘A sociotechnical process of applying digitizing techniques to broader social and institutional contexts that render digital technologies infrastructural’ (Tilson et al., 2010). Digitisation is the process of changing from analogue to digital form, whereas digitalisation is the use of digital technologies to change a business model and provide new revenue and value-producing opportunities (Gartner’s IT Glossary). Digitisation, digitalisation and DT are interconnected. These three terms are associated with the use of digital technologies. The consensus today seems to be that DT encompasses more than digitisation (Haffke et al., 2016; Iansiti & Lakhani, 2014; Yoo et al., 2012).