Course 2026-2027 a.y.

How can traditional companies become digital champions? Do you want to take part in the transformation that is redefining how established companies compete, organize, and grow?

Digital startups are growing rapidly and reshaping markets, industries, and competitive dynamics. Yet many established companies still operate without a deep understanding of the rules, opportunities, and challenges of digital competition.

In this course, we do something rare and highly useful for your future professional experience, whether you work in an established company, a growing scale-up, or a digital venture: we connect technological change, digital strategy, organizational design, and real transformation work.

The course reviews the main technological drivers of digital change, the strategic choices enabled by digital technologies, and the organizational design decisions required to transform traditional companies into more digital, data-driven, and innovation-oriented organizations.

A central idea of the course is that the nature of information inside companies is changing profoundly. User-generated content, collaborative innovation, Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of Things, cloud platforms, big data, and social network applications are producing an unprecedented amount of information. However, many companies remain information rich but knowledge poor.

Turning this mass of information into usable knowledge requires companies to rethink their relationship with data, technology, processes, decision-making, and organizational capabilities. The course addresses this challenge by building a practical toolkit of actionable frameworks and best practices for making digital transformation possible in real companies.

Consistently with this approach, the exam is not only a theoretical test. It is also a sophisticated group project in which students apply the course frameworks to a real digital transformation challenge.

The course is organized into three main sections:

• A theoretical framework for digital business transformation
  We discuss the pillars of successful digital transformation, including digital projects, digital strategies, company goals, operational implications, organizational choices, and change management.
• A practical review of the key technologies driving digital transformation
  We examine the managerial implications of technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of Things, Cloud Computing, Big Data, and digital platforms.
• Live case studies and managerial conversations
  Students interact with managers involved in digitally transformed processes or digital transformation projects, in order to understand how transformation actually happens inside companies.

Main topics of this course:

• The course covers the following topics:

• Technology trends driving digital business transformation
• Characteristics of digital transformation projects
• Artificial Intelligence: basic concepts and applications to companies
• Artificial Intelligence and its impact on company processes
• Internet of Things and Cloud Computing: impact on company processes
• Strategic impact of digital transformation: theories, frameworks, and measures
• Organizational choices for digital transformation projects
• Change management in digital transformation
• Live case studies of digitally transformed companies

By the end of the course, students will be able to:

• Explain the most relevant technological trends enabling digital business transformation, including Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of Things, Cloud Computing, Big Data, and digital platforms.
• Understand how these technologies can be adopted by traditional companies to strengthen their competitive advantage.
• Describe the main strategic, organizational, and operational challenges involved in digital transformation.
• Summarize the most important managerial theories and frameworks for understanding and managing digital transformation.
• Design a theoretically sound digital transformation project, linking technologies, strategic objectives, organizational choices, and implementation challenges.

By the end of the course, students will be able to:

• Design and develop a concrete plan for digitally transforming a traditional company.
• Translate digital technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of Things, Cloud Computing, Big Data, and digital platforms into specific business applications.
• Assess how contemporary technologies can improve processes, decision-making, customer experience, and competitive positioning.
• Develop a change management strategy to support the implementation of digital transformation projects in target companies.
• Help companies understand the managerial implications of digital technologies, beyond their purely technical features.
• Act with a consulting-oriented mindset, by diagnosing problems, structuring transformation opportunities, and proposing actionable recommendations.

• Guest speaker's talks (in class or in distance)
• Company visits
• Practical Exercises
• Collaborative Works / Assignments
• Interaction/Gamification

Important information:

This course relies strongly on teams and teamwork.

Students will be asked to form teams, select a company to work on, and develop a digital transformation project to be delivered at the end of the course.

Teamwork will take place both outside and, when relevant, during class sessions. For this reason, active participation is a fundamental part of the learning experience.

Teaching methods

The course combines different teaching methods:

• Continuous teamwork
  Students will progressively develop their own digital transformation project in teams, simulating the dynamics of a real company project or consulting assignment.
• Student presentations
  Students will pitch intermediate and final deliverables, receive feedback from classmates and professors, and use this feedback to improve their ideas and recommendations.
• Guest speakers
  Managers and digital champions will share their experience, offering students a concrete view of how digital transformation is designed and implemented in real organizations.
• (Virtual) company visits and live cases
  The course will include live cases of digitally transformed companies and technology suppliers, providing direct exposure to digital transformation projects, technologies, and managerial challenges.

For attending students, the final grade is composed as follows:

• 80% — Field project on digital transformation
  Team-based final handout.
• 20% — In-class presentation of the team project
  Team pitch based on the final project.
• Pass/Fail — Individual exam
  The individual exam must be passed. In case of a Fail, 4 points will be subtracted from the final grade.
• Peer evaluation
  Peer evaluation is used to confirm the individual grade or, in case of negative feedback from teammates, to reduce it between 1 and 4 points.

The most important component of the assessment is the final group handout. This deliverable is designed to train students’ ability to apply the main concepts of the course to a concrete digital transformation project.

The in-class presentation is also an important part of the evaluation. Its purpose is to assess students’ ability to synthesize the complexity of the final handout into a limited number of slides and present the project clearly and effectively in a few minutes.

Peer evaluation is used to increase awareness of each student’s individual contribution to the team project and to ensure fairness in the final assessment.

The individual exam is aimed at checking students’ theoretical understanding of the key concepts, frameworks, and topics discussed in the course.

Written exam 

Non-attending students will be assessed through a written exam, based on essay questions.

Please note that the required readings for attending and non-attending students are different.

Course slides are not required for non-attending students.

The individual exam is aimed at checking students’ theoretical understanding of the key concepts, frameworks, models, and topics included in the course syllabus, with particular attention to the course materials, assigned readings, and their application to relevant business and organizational situations.

• Teaching materials for attending students include the course's slides only.

Readings for non-attending students

Important note on readings

If any of the readings listed below are also available on the journal website as web pages in HTML format, students are required to download and study the PDF version available through the Bocconi Library.

PDF versions may contain additional material that is not included in the web page version. This often happens with journals such as Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, California Management Review, and similar outlets.

Where to find the readings

The papers and reports listed below can be found through one or more of the following channels:

• Bocconi Library, mainly through the Business Source Complete database;
• JSTOR, when logged in as Bocconi students;
• Directly on the Internet, when publicly available.

Important note for non-attending students

Non-attending students are not required to study the course slides.

The following list of papers and reports is required for the non-attending exam. Readings are organized by topic in order to provide a clearer structure of the subject matter.

List of papers and reports for the non-attending exam

1. Definition of digital transformation and its strategic and organizational impacts

• Verhoef, P. C., Broekhuizen, T., Bart, Y., et al. 2021. “Digital Transformation: A Multidisciplinary Reflection and Research Agenda.” Journal of Business Research, Vol. 122.
• Kretschmer, T., and Khashabi, P. 2020. “Digital Transformation and Organization Design.” California Management Review, Vol. 62.

2. Technologies and their impact on digital transformation processes

With a specific focus on Artificial Intelligence

• McKinsey Global Institute. 2017. A Future That Works: Automation, Employment, and Productivity. Full report.
• Wilson, J. H., and Daugherty, P. R. 2018. “Collaborative Intelligence: Humans and AI Are Joining Forces.” Harvard Business Review.
• Gerbert, P., Duranton, S., Steinhäuser, S., and Ruwolt, P. 2018. “The Build-or-Buy Dilemma in AI.” Boston Consulting Group Henderson Institute.

3. Theoretical foundations of digital transformation

3a. Impact of technologies on users

• Venkatesh, V., and Davis, F. D. 2000. “A Theoretical Extension of the Technology Acceptance Model: Four Longitudinal Field Studies.” Management Science.
• Venkatesh, V., and Bala, H. 2008. “Technology Acceptance Model 3 and a Research Agenda on Interventions.” Decision Sciences.

3b. Knowledge, information, and knowledge management in data-rich organizations

• Brown, J. S., and Duguid, P. 1998. “Organizing Knowledge.” California Management Review, 40(3), 90–111.
• Feldman, M. S., and March, J. G. 1981. “Information in Organizations as Signal and Symbol.” Administrative Science Quarterly, 26(2), 171–186.
• Hansen, M. T., and Haas, M. R. 2001. “Competing for Attention in Knowledge Markets: Electronic Document Dissemination in a Management Consulting Company.” Administrative Science Quarterly, 46(1), 1–28.
• Haas, M. R., and Hansen, M. T. 2007. “Different Knowledge, Different Benefits: Toward a Productivity Perspective on Knowledge Sharing in Organizations.” Strategic Management Journal, 28(11).