Digital Transformation: A Cognitive Study for Organizations to Shape their Journeys

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to reveal novelties of digital transformation with a holistic approach based on expert experience, that may help digital business leaders to shape their digital transformation journeys. Theoretical framework: With the acceleration of technological advancements, the complexity of digital transformation is increasing and it leads to novel impacts. As expected, this raises the difficulty of developing a final methodology. Therefore, there is still more research required to explore these novelties. Design/methodology/approach: As a basis, existing maturity models and frameworks were inspected. Then, C-Level managers were interviewed to explore the novelties. Axial and selective coding was used to interpret the interview data. Findings: Findings showed that digital transformation is not only about digital technologies but also the transformation of business models and cultural change. In addition, technologies like 5th-generation networks (5G), quantum computing, and blockchain may affect these models more in the future. Organizations may have to consider law regulations, hiring, management support, and customer experience more, to do a successful digital transformation. Research, Practical & Social implications: Future research is recommended to bring more practitioner experience to the theory and highlight the cultural effects of digital transformation for organizations. Originality/value: The results show that the complex nature of digital transformation both requires and causes the number of publications to grow exponentially. Also, this can help business leaders to make use of the results to improve their digital transformation strategies