98631 - DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION STRATEGIES

Learning outcomes

By the end of this course students are able to: - identify opportunities to address specific problems within the firm and frame them in a way where a digital solution can be optimal; - harness the power of disruptive digital technologies by improving operations and increasing business value; - explore the challenges associated with digital platforms and learn to develop strategies to deal with them.

Course contents

About the module leader: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/gianvito-lanzolla-baa22a/]

Module Outline

This module examines how digital technologies transform strategy, organizing, and the practice of leading and managing. It draws on state-of-the-art research, contemporary cases, and frontier debates in AI, platforms, and digital transformation. Participants engage with cutting-edge thinking on how organizations adapt—or fail to adapt—to technological change.

Aims of the Module

By the end of this module, participants will be able to:

• Explain the technological, socio-economic, and geopolitical forces driving digital transformation and their implications for leading, organizing, and managing.

• Assess regulatory challenges and opportunities linked to data, platforms, and AI.

• Evaluate how digital technologies disrupt industries and reshape competitive advantage using state-of-the-art strategic frameworks.

• Analyse emerging digital ecologies—including platforms, ecosystems, and AI-enabled markets—and their consequences for organizing.

• Identify strategic and entrepreneurial opportunities created by digital technologies.

• Appraise organizational and strategic responses available to firms navigating digital disruption.

• Reflect on and develop the capabilities required to lead, organize, and manage effectively in environments shaped by AI, algorithms, and digital transformation.

• Design a practical leadership, organizing, and management roadmap for guiding digital transformation as an executive or entrepreneur.

Module Content

1. Understanding Digital Transformation

We begin by defining digital transformation and explaining why it represents a structural break in value creation and organizing.
Key state-of-the-art themes include:

• Convergence of digital, physical, and biological systems

• Geopolitics of data and AI

• Regulatory innovation (US, UK/EU, global competition regimes)

• Shifts in customer trade-offs, industry boundaries, and socio-economic structures

This section establishes the conceptual foundations leaders and managers need to interpret the digital landscape.

2. Strategic Responses to Digital Technologies

We analyse how entrepreneurs and incumbents respond strategically to digital disruption. Cutting-edge themes include:

• Customer-centricity as a new strategic paradigm

• Ecosystem strategy and platform competition

• Business model innovation and digital entrepreneurship

• First mover versus follower under digital scale dynamics

• Digital diversification and new sources of competitive advantage

This section provides participants with state-of-the-art strategic frameworks for competing in digital ecosystems.

3. Artificial Intelligence: Strategy, Organizing and Governance

A dedicated section focuses on AI as a transformational force across strategy, organizing, and management. We draw on frontier research in AI strategy, AI-enabled coordination, and AI governance:

• AI Strategy: how firms capture value from AI, data infrastructures, and learning loops

• AI Organization: redesigning processes, roles, and workflows around predictive and generative AI

• AI Governance: balancing autonomy and control, explicability, algorithmic oversight, and organizational safeguards

• Leadership and managerial judgment: how leaders make decisions under algorithmic ambiguity and data-driven visibility

This section directly links the diffusion of AI to new challenges in leading, organizing, and managing.

4. New Organizational Paradigms

Building on the AI section, we examine how digital technologies redefine coordination, control, and organizing:

• Algorithmic and digital forms of control

• New coordination mechanisms (planning + mutual adjustment + AI-assisted coordination)

• Distributed and hybrid organizing

• Digital visibility, peer monitoring, and new power dynamics

• Emerging organizational capabilities for operating in high-velocity digital contexts

We integrate state-of-the-art insights from organizational theory, digital organizing, and sociomaterial research.

5. Innovation in the Digital Age

We explore how firms innovate under conditions of technological acceleration, using the most recent research in corporate innovation and venture building:

• Innovation labs and experimentation architectures

• Corporate venture capital and venture building

• Scaling digital innovation inside established firms

• Overcoming inertia and the “not-invented-here” syndrome

• Leadership and managerial practices for sustaining ambidexterity

This section highlights how leaders, organizers, and managers build and govern innovation portfolios.

Readings/Bibliography

Lanzolla, G. & Markides, C. (2025). Diversification in the Age of Data and AI. Cambridge University Press.

Agrawal, A., Gans, J., & Goldfarb, A. (2018). Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence. Harvard Business Review Press.

Cusumano, M., Gawer, A., & Yoffie, D. (2019). The Business of Platforms. Harper Business.

Gawer, A. (2021). Digital Platforms and Ecosystems. Oxford University Press.

Brynjolfsson, E. & McAfee, A. (2017). Machine, Platform, Crowd. W. W. Norton.

Olson, P. (2024). Supremacy. Pan Macmillan.

Rogers, D. (2016). The Digital Transformation Playbook. Columbia University Press.

Shapiro, C. & Varian, H. R. (1998 / 2013). Information Rules. Harvard Business Press.

Catmull, E. & Wallace, A. (2014). Creativity, Inc. Random House.

Tegmark, M. (2017). Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. Knopf.

Teaching methods

Lectures; case discussions; external speakers; workshops

Assessment methods

Coursework

Part A: Assessed Case Studies

Part B: Final Integration Project

Office hours

See the website of Gianvito Lanzolla