Strategizing Digital Transformations: Sensing Threats and Opportunities with the Digital Disruption Analysis

Abstract

Managers need to navigate the increasing complexity of their business environments due to emerging technological developments and digital disruption. Strategic threats and opportunities to their business must constantly be assessed, but organizations often lack the time and resources to develop a structured approach. With the Digital Disruption Analysis, Voß et al. (2020) published a systematic methodology to assess emerging innovations and to derive digital transformation strategies. In this paper, the Digital Disruption Analysis is tested with technology foresight experts of an established enterprise in the energy sector and improved in an iterative approach. In an initial application, opportunities for improvement are identified through participatory observation and direct feedback. Then, the Digital Disruption Analysis is revised and applied again in the same company to assess the improvements, using the same evaluation method and an additional qualitative questionnaire. The main adaptations of the Digital Disruption Analysis are the integration of a weak signal analysis based on data and text mining approach to identify relevant emerging innovations, the integration of a multidimensional digital disruption scoring model, and a new Trajectory Mapping approach. The experts note improved applicability and overall enhanced functionality of the revised Digital Disruption Analysis. Our findings contribute to future research on applicable management tools for digital transformations and serve as a foundation for understanding the nature of digital disruptions and how they can be identified and monitored.