Digital Transformation

Digitization and technology have changed the ways that information is generated, stored, shared, and integrated, with profound impacts on all knowledge-generating enterprises. In strategic plans, universities portray their appetite for change through words like transformation, innovation, and entrepreneurship. Yet, sometimes their focus is solely on the outside—such as the impacts of the knowledge they create on society. Digital transformation becomes innovative in universities when also embraced to advance the fundamentals of academic mission. In the process, universities must reconsider how digitization can enhance their own creativity, collaboration, and community, while aligning incentives to the possibilities of new technology.