What is a Digital Business?

Digital businesses are less about owning assets and more about using networks to deliver goods and services to customers.

01:17

Jul 11, 2015
1,546 Views

Digital business isn't just about using technology and automation. It's a fundamental shift in the way businesses create value for themselves and their customers. Dion Hinchcliffe points out that digital business creates value through using networks, not through owning assets.

Transcript

​Digital business looks very different than conventional business and almost to the point that it’s unrecognizable.

So great examples are like Uber and AirBnB, where there are both responsible for launching a large transportation network, but they own no actual resources themselves, they are only a conduit.

So this is the common pattern that we see is that the really great high-value digital businesses are orchestrators, existing assets and networks much more than they try to create and do everything themselves. And this is really at the core validity of digital businesses is that the network do the work. Because it’s the largest core value that we have and we are talking of course global networks like the Internet.

But others as well, with the Internet of things, where all connected and so the leading digital businesses make the most of all those assets on a network, and channel them and orchestrate them and even control them to some extent to create very high scale business outcomes.

Published Date: Jul 11, 2015

Author: Michael Krigsman

Episode ID: 199