The terms digital economy and digital transformation describe the convergence of four different forces that are changing the needs of businesses: mobile, cloud, IoT, and open source:
Before the internet, organizations required brick-and-mortar stores or phone lines to conduct their businesses. The advent and accessibility of the internet created a critical category-formation time opportunity for organizations. Businesses started to use the internet mainly as a storefront or display in order to drive people to their brick-and-mortar stores. It was also used for advertising purposes.
Soon after this, businesses began adding the ability to purchase things online, and companies, such as Amazon, realized that they could capitalize on the economies-of-scale, product aggregation, consolidation, recommendation, and pricing optimization that an online...