7DIBU007W Digital Capabilities - University Of Westminster

Learning Outcome 1: Evaluate the potential impact of digital technologies and emergent trends on organisation operation and performance.

Learning Outcome 2: Critically analyse the potential for digital attackers to compete against digital and conventional rivals.

Report:

An individual diagnostic investigative report based on the impact of a digital technology on an organisation. The manager at your internship organisation has a number of opportunities driven by digital technologies on the radar screen and has asked you to choose one to investigate further. There are specific questions/issues for each technology to be included in the report.

Structure as you think best for an executive investigative report. Build on your experience from the report you completed in the Business Diagnosis module. Seek to impress.

Feel free to use graphics, data, videos, and links to other sites to corroborate your points. 2000 words excluding references.

Useful practitioner newspapers/journals which we use on the module include The Financial Times, The Wall Street journal, The New York Times, McKinsey Quarterly, Forbes, Business Today, Harvard Business Review. But do include some academic journal references since the manager may have already read the practitioner reports.

Choose one of the following investigations.

1. Competing with AI Challenge
Many companies today use AI to create and capture value. Choose a company that uses AI in a creative way to drive value creation, value capture, or its operating model.

You may focus on the use of AI to create new products or services, or you may focus on the use of AI within the process of some part of its current business. Describe the current challenges and opportunities the company faces in this deployment. Then recommend changes the company needs to make to address these challenges or take advantages of these opportunities. While you should devote most of the space to value creation, please consider the value capture strategy as well.

(To make it more interesting, please stay away from well-known AI companies such as Amazon, Google, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft.)

2. Competing with Big Data

Many organisations use Big data and data analytics as an essential asset in their business. Think about how Waze collects and analyzes millions of queries every day to estimate traffic flows or airlines organise the requests for seats for hundreds of thousands of users each day to reset their pricing, or UPS uses hundreds of thousands of sensors to track millions of packages each data to feed users information about the progress of their shipments.

Choose a company that uses large data or data analytics to enhance its business. In other words, big data can be valuable in the context of offering a service or as a complement to another business process. How does data serve as an asset in their business? What type of investments are required to build and renew that asset? What type of investments and process put that asset to use, and creates value for the company? How does the company capture value from large data and analytics? What challenges did the company have to overcome to make use of the assets? What challenges and opportunities do you anticipate for the company in the future? Devote most of the space to value creation, but feel free to make observations about aspects of the value capture strategy.

(To make it more interesting, please stay away from Big data use by the big five - Amazon, Google, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft.)

3. Driving Platform Innovation
Digital technologies give rise to a variety of platforms. Think about how EBay matches suppliers and buyers, or iTunes makes apps available for iPhone users.

Identify an organisation that you think has an innovative platform. Focus on how it creates and captures value. Why is it innovative? Identify the core processes for the platform, and describe how those processes create value for participants, such as buyers or sellers. If this platform invites applications or advertising, explain what value goes to the applications or advertisers. Identify two or three interesting elements of the platform, such as its scale, prevalence of multi-homing, or pricing. Stress the strategy for value creation, but feel free to make observations about aspects of the platform's value capture strategy.

(To make it more interesting, please stay away from platforms owned by the big five - Amazon, Google, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft.)

4. Digitisation Winners and Losers
Digital technologies are upending many industries and companies. Think about Uber's impact on the taxi business, or Spotify's impact on music downloads.

Identify companies/organisations that you think are winning and losing due to a specific instance of digital transformation. Pick one situation with a winner on one side and a loser on the other. Why are they a winner and why is this transformation putting the losing organisation in a difficult place? Stress the novelty of the situation. Discuss the key elements of how the winner creates and/or captures value, and similarly for the key elements of how the other firm is losing value.

(Please devote most of the report to the winner, and focus less on the losers, devoting attention to winner/losers according to a ratio approximately 3/1.)

5. Competing With or Against Crowds
Firms can leverage digital technologies to harness the power of collective intelligence from the crowds to create value and capture value. Focus on one of the following:
- An industry where no firms have leveraged crowds, and come up with a crowd-based business model that may potentially transform the industry. Describe how value is created and captured. Explain why the crowd will participate, and why your crowd-based model is better than the current model employed by the incumbents.

- A company that is using crowds (external or internal) in an innovative manner. Describe how they incentivize participation and manage the crowd. What are the challenges? Describe how value creation and value capture occur, and the growth potential of this business.

Attachment:- Digital capabilities.rar