Getting to grips with Digital Transformation: The Irish Times Fusion Initiative

Many industries have been “going digital” for about twenty years now. But even those parts of the economy most suited to digital transformation – books, newspapers, music, movies – continue to evolve in somewhat unpredictable ways. This is partly because digital transformation is a two-phase process. The first phase is where traditional offerings are digitised – newspapers replicating their print content on a website for example. The second phase is where entirely new offerings emerge, things that are only possible because of digital technology. Online newspapers today include live blogs, video and interactive content; music is streamed and packaged into playlists created by online communities; and so on. This two-phase process is well known, but it still throws up an interesting conundrum for incumbent companies.