Leveraging Digital Innovation: Lessons for Implementation

Digital technologies offer unprecedented opportunities for organizations to realize efficiency gains and explore new lines of business. However, their integration into existing corporate structures and routines hardly materializes without frictions and the need for organizational adaptation.

This collection of corporate narratives assembles best practice cases of companies - ranging from startups to multinational players and Hidden Champions - that have successfully managed to implement and leverage these innovations. Ten distinct use cases focus on three disruptive technologies, Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain and Robotic Process Automation. Interviews with practitioners address hurdles they encountered, and ways how to gain strategic support of key stakeholders within the organization.

The ambition of this compilation is to describe concrete initiatives and derive insights from the experience of implementing disruptive technologies in a given corporate context. It highlights the advantages and potential pitfalls of differing pathways of implementation, including an internal setup with centers of excellence sharing their expertise with business units, the move towards an ambidextrous organization, and joint ventures with niche players in the larger innovation ecosystem.

Based on their aggregated experience, this book provides a roadmap for executives how to become agents of change and implement digital transformation in their organizations. For the academic audience, the testimonials of practitioners offer ethnographic insights that depict the complexity of actual corporate change initiatives within a context of uncertainty and mimetic isomorphism.

Christoph Burger is senior lecturer at ESMT Berlin. Before joining in 2003, he worked five years in industry at Otto Versand and as vice president at the Bertelsmann Buch AG, five years at consulting practice Arthur D. Little, and five years as independent consultant focusing on private equity financing of SMEs.His research focus is on energy markets, innovation/ web3, and decision making/ negotiation. Christoph directs and teaches sustainable transformation, decision making/ negotiation, web3/ Metaverse in open as well as in customized programs for senior executives in a variety of industries such as banking, consumer goods, energy, IT, or transport industry. He is a speaker in conferences and a mentor to start-ups.Christoph studied business administration at the University of Saarbrücken (Germany), the Hochschule St. Gallen (Switzerland), and economics at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (USA). ORCiD: 0000-0001-8717-0982

Dr. Jens Weinmann is Program Director at ESMT Berlin and expert for the topics of innovation management and digital transformation, with a focus on energy and transport markets. He co-directs ESMT's executive education program "Analytics for Decision-Makers", teaches in ESMT's open enrolment programs and degree programs as well as a guest lecturer in international business schools such as ESCP, HEC Paris, London Business School and Saint Paul (Brazil). Jens graduated in energy engineering (Dipl.-Ing.) at the Technical University Berlin and received his PhD in Decision Sciences from London Business School. His academic experience includes fellowships at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and the Florence School of Regulation, European University Institute. ORCiD: 0000-0003-2744-0893