MS2101: A Process Where Digital Technologies Create Disruptions Triggering Strategic Responses: Managing Digital Transformation Essay, NUI, Ireland

Question 1: Introduction to Digital Transformation

Vial’s (2019) article (‘Understanding digital transformation: A review and a research agenda’, available on Blackboard), describes digital transformation as “a process where digital technologies create disruptions triggering strategic responses from organizations that seek to alter their value creation paths while managing the structural changes and organizational barriers that affect the positive and negative outcomes of this process.”With reference to digital transformations:

1. Explain the process of digital transformation

2. Describe how organizations strategize efforts to digitally transform

3. Outline key challenges associated with digital transformation

You are required to carry out research (to beyond the article referenced here) and provide examples and references to real-world cases and other articles to support your answer where appropriate.

Question 2: Agile and Lean Principles, Practices, and Operations

Different frameworks are adopted (e.g., SAFe, Spotify) in various ways and at different levels in the organization often leading to suboptimal or even abandoned agile transformations.

1. Describe how agile transformations change the IT operating model for digital organizations?

3. What are considered the common pitfalls when trying to implement an agile transformation at an organizational level?

You are required to carry out research (to beyond the article referenced here) and provide examples and references to real-world cases and other articles to support your answer where appropriate.

Question 3: Disruptive Digital Innovation

Clayton Christensen was the pioneer of ‘disruptive innovation’ and the prominent management thinker whose ideas on technology had a big influence on some of today’s largest companies. His work describes how innovation can create new markets and value networks and eventually disrupts an existing market and the way industry functions. Christensen et al. (2015) describe how the theory of disruptive innovation has proved to be a powerful way of thinking about innovation-driven growth. With reference to the Christensen et al. (2015) article on “What is disruptive innovation” (available on Blackboard):

1. Describe the concept of ‘disruptive innovation’ and provide examples

2. Outline the key criteria for disruptive innovation

3. Describe the challenges typically experienced by organizations in responding to the threat of disruptive innovation

You are required to carry out research and provide examples and references to real-world cases and other articles to support your answer where appropriate.