A Three-Stage Model of Digital Transformation

Abstract

Digitalization brings convenience to the world and changes the business landscape. However, the scope of structural change that digitalization brings about goes to much broader business practices, for example, how firms begin digital transformation has received little attention. In this paper, I study the practices and separate the digitalization practice into three stages. Due to the uniqueness and interdependence among those three stages, digital transformation becomes continuous and processual. This theoretical model will guide us to analyze the digital transformation of business group. I make our contributions to existing research on the empirical setting as well where one entity goes through the three stages and how it carries out. I switch focus from platform economy to the way to digital transformation of traditional firms, expanding the influential scope of digital technologies and answering the practical issues. Besides, this paper also discusses the application in furniture industry. This paper will lead to findings that can motivate more research on how firms implement their digital transformation.