The “Not so New Digital Economy”.

They are everywhere, the buzzwords of digital transformation: disruption, workplace 4.0, VUCA, AI, new work, digital twin, Internet of Things, cloud and cloud again. Industry 4.0,
Digital Mindset and Industrial Revolution 3, 4 and 5. How good we have become at driving the same sow through the village over and over again. And, surprisingly, we don’t really get tired of it either!

Identity-building blah blah blah

During a presentation at C-level in a company, I once had the fun of having ten of these buzzwords explained by
participants. The result was sobering; although everyone knew these terms from somewhere,
only one person from the twelve who took part was able to classify half of the terms just about correctly
.

So why are these buzzwords still so present and popular? I say that because they create an identity in the business world. For all those who still perceive digitalization as a process, as a transition from analogue to digital. As something that still has to happen.

There are an astonishing number of people in decision-making positions who still perceive “the digital” as something new and therefore as a foreign body, so to speak. And – people who think this way, according to my
observation, use these digitalization buzzwords more often than average. Pay attention to it – as if it were a
kind of tribe code in communication.

“Software-based, what else?”

Yet digital as we knew it 10 years ago is no longer new. Quite the opposite:
it is the basis from which we start in the company. Software has long been the most important basic infrastructure of every
company.

Not “New”

And so what we are experiencing here is only “new” for those who still come from a time when not everything was “digital”. Like me, for example. Younger people, my children for example, generally find everything “non-digital” in and on products a bit strange. Nothing will be digitized for this generation.

Not “Digital”

Just because a company uses electricity does not make it an electricity company. It’s exactly the same with digital;
just because everything is digital doesn’t make a company a digital or software company.

The question is not “what can we digitize?”

After all, the question is no longer what could or should be digitized. No, the basis on which
we start is digital. In a business context, anything else means standing still – and as we all know, standing still is
a step backwards.