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A revolution is occurring as digital technology becomes embedded in every aspect of our lives. The impact of these disruptive changes can be seen across all industries with new business models unseating industry incumbents, uncertainty around the future of the workplace, fast collaborative approaches to product and service design driving innovation, and redrawn market boundaries as supply chains become platform-based ecosystems. So profound are the changes that many now refer to this as the 4th Industrial Revolution, taking us beyond the early Internet age dominated by e-commerce and one-stop information portals toward new forms of value derived from data generated in real-time by intelligent interconnected devices and feeding advanced forms of predictive data analytics.

This book provides the background to help understand the context and key themes of the emerging digital economy. It gives the reader a framework for appreciating the critical implications of the drive to adopt digital technologies in business and offers practical insights to guide the digital transformation being undertaken by today´s organizations. In particular, the book explores the fundamental role played by integration of core infrastructure services (computing power, data, and communication services) to enable this transformation. It highlights digitization of service delivery as one of the most rapid and compelling trends of the past two decades, spurring not just a technical revolution, but also a cultural shift in what people now expect in service delivery: speed, accuracy, and transparency.

Based on a wide variety of examples and success patterns, this book provides today´s managers and practitioners the tools for both understanding and leading in the digital world. This offers the reader a broad, accessible point of view on the digital revolution and its impacts in business and society. It focuses on three core themes central to digital transformation: Agility, Innovation, and Management. In each of these the book provides a fundamental assessment of current thinking, offers insights through critical analysis of good and bad practices, and illustrates strategies for success using a wide variety of relevant practical examples. The result is a compelling blend of practical insights underpinned with the latest business and management theory supported by a wide variety of contemporary examples, best practices, and success patterns.

Consequently, this book is an invaluable primer and guide for managers and practitioners at every level in organizations finding themselves in need of rethinking their products and services for the digital age. It also provides an essential reference for students in advanced business and management courses seeking a contemporary view on the impact of digital technology in the practice of strategy and leadership in context of the current transformation toward a digital economy.

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Professor Alan W. Brown, University of Exeter Business School, UK

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