Digital Transformation Payday

CHAPTER 12Some Groundwork for Prediction: Does Digital Transformation Cause Paydays? Well, It Depends …

I can already hear some readers saying what I would say in their shoes: “Only solutions, not even more complexity please!” And you are definitely right. From a strategy consultant one would expect a much clearer message on this decisive question. In my first draft it said: “Yes, but …” However, in Germany we have the nice saying that “everything you say before the ‘but’ is a lie,” so I decided not to make a change.

Nevertheless, “Well, it depends …” is certainly also not what you deserve to hear.

But it was written like this on purpose to provoke curiosity, deeper thinking, and an acknowledgment of the question's complexity. While this book is not meant to be a bulletproof, triple‐peer‐reviewed science publication (using statistics as the art of never having to say you're wrong), I am also a business school professor after all. Digital Transformation Payday has the ambition of leaving behind the purely opinion‐driven fact‐free world of digital transformation practice. Therefore, before we dig deeper into some potential predictors in your business that can influence your digital transformation payday, we need to develop a better understanding of the general relationship between digital transformation and market capitalization or earnings, respectively.

A scientific publication or not, any careful claim of indications for causality—and I am sure that is what you as a reader ...