The Digital Revolution: How Technological Trends Change the Business World

At present, the business world is changing drastically. Applying and using new information technologies in the business context lead to a significant change. In certain cases, it can even lead to the displacement of established business and value chain models—and this at an enormous speed. British journalist, Hamish McRae, exemplifies this change with the companies Uber, Facebook, Alibaba, and Airbnb. These four companies can be regarded as purely digital companies, since their Internet-based business models are fundamentally based on the innovative use of modern information technologies. All four companies are also market leaders in their respective segments and have replaced established competitors in a relatively short period of time. A closer look reveals to what extent the new, successful market players differ from their competitors who have “traditional” business models. Uber is, for instance, probably the largest taxi company in the world, but does not own a single taxi. The world’s most popular media company, Facebook, does not produce its own content. Alibaba, the world’s largest retailer, maintains no warehouse stock levels. And Airbnb, the world’s largest provider of accommodation, does not own hotels. Hamish McRae summarizes the development as follows: “Something big is going on” [1]. In addition to the intensity of these developments, the speed of transformation is remarkable. A central reason for this is the changed speed at which users accept new media at the consumer level. While radio took 38 years and television 13 years to gain an audience of 50 million people, the Internet’s “conquest” took only 3 years. Recent Internet-based services such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram took less than 12 months [2].