Digital transformation of enterprises - Digital Economy 2400-PL3SL243B

Digital revolution fundamentally challenged the processes governing most of the markets around the world. The rapid advances in hardware and machines boosted the efficiency of human work and in many cases replaced it entirely. Digitisation of content abolished several of its prior limitations such as the costs of distribution, production, storage, archivisation and transfer. Internet removed communicational restrictions such as those resulting from time and distance. New digital tools, algorithms and online businesses replaced the more expensive and inefficient solutions rooted in the physical world.

The combination of these trends brought upon a wide range of changes to the everyday life. Economic growth became dependent on the growth of digital technologies and their integration into labour markets and bureaucratic procedures. Communication between employers and employees from two sides of the globe became as easy as those between people from two sides of a city. Every consumer acquired the tools to become a creator with a potentially unlimited reach. Digitalisation ushered in a new kind of society – permanently attached to the digital world. This, in turn, contributed to the emergence of new professions and new kinds of audiences – reachable through mobile devices and the internet. At the same time, algorithms and machines caused much of the automatable work to shift from humans to more efficient robots.

Despite this gigantic impact on the functioning of economies, the digital economy itself is the topic of only a fraction of the economic research. The phrase itself – “digital economy” – has not been clearly defined yet (i.e. there is no one globally accepted definition). The quick changes in the digital world make it difficult to construct one specific index that could measure the size of the digital economy over time or allow to compare it across several countries. There are still gaps in knowledge on the effects of technologies such as the artificial intelligence on societies development. The issues are the more current, as big data and AI are increasingly used across a growing variety of areas, such as: city management, government services, bank technologies or firm management.

Easier access to technologies and the competition between the major tech companies also change the structure of creative sectors. Only in the past 20 years, the physical carriers have been largely replaced first by internet ‘piracy’, then by purchasable digital files, and then by culture and entertainment as a service (e.g. streaming). This process is still ongoing, with a growing competition in many of the streaming markets (fueled both by digitalization efforts of incumbent publishers and emergence of new players from tech sectors). Simultaneously new industries enter the streaming era, including video games that are currently eclipsing both the music and audiovisual industries. Finally, new technologies keep arriving, including the augmented and virtual realities that could potentially disrupt the current development patterns.

This constant flux highlights the importance of continuous monitoring and studying of the effects of new technologies on the functioning of economies, societies, as well as the activities of creators and consumers. At the same time, access to data has never been so large. Every day, new data bases, content and information arrive to the internet, allowing for new ways of measuring of the changes and to conduct new exciting research.

The seminar aims to tackle the new challenges of the digital economy and to help in understanding of the processes shaping the markets in the digital era. Over the course of the meetings, we will discuss the ways new technologies affect countries and markets, and how they affect consumers and specific sectors (including the creative sectors).

The course will prepare you to write your thesis and will support you over the course of writing it. The course will cover a year of collaboration.

Students should be interested in the topics of internet, ICT, economic cooperation, new technologies, new forms of work, creative industries and culture. Basics: microeconomics, macroeconomics, international economics.