Admission requirements
Students need to have an affinity with basic business administration, management, and organization concepts.
Description
Digital technologies are a fundamental technological development of our time (like steam-engine to the industrial revolution). Cloud technology, AI, IoT, and more recently Blockchain cause traditional industries to converge (e.g., telecom, information, media, and entertainment, financial sectors) and popularize new types of markets (e.g., multi-sided markets). New competitive landscapes––created by challengers/start-ups and driven by digital––call for a strategic response of established business players. Established companies change their organizational and managerial approaches, particularly regarding design, inter-firm collaborations, and business models. Addressing developments made by digital, in this course, we will deal with the questions of how companies embrace such a transformation through implementing a portfolio of strategies. These strategies include re-organizing businesses, engaging in new business eco-systems, monitoring and building relationships with start-ups, and so forth. Cases from the real world in finance, telecommunication, IT, media, and entertainment, and health industries will be discussed in the course.
Course objectives
The primary objective of this course is to provide students with the knowledge and skills to analyze various organizational and management dimensions of digital transformation in businesses. We seek to meet this objective by enhancing students’ understanding of different cases of digital technologies. At the end of this course, students are expected to be able to:
explain why and how some companies survive digital transformation, while others do not;
understand how challengers/start-ups play a role in shaping the new competitive landscape for established companies;
discuss the effect of digital technologies’ characteristics on firm strategy;
evaluate the effects of organizational elements including management, business models, ecosystem, identity, and design on companies’ digital transformations;
design strategies for incumbents to take advantage of digital transformation, for example creating/joining platforms, on the basis of relevant theories and case studies.
Timetable
You will find the timetables for all courses and degree programmes of Leiden University in the tool MyTimetable (login). Any teaching activities that you have sucessfully registered for in MyStudyMap will automatically be displayed in MyTimeTable. Any timetables that you add manually, will be saved and automatically displayed the next time you sign in.
MyTimetable allows you to integrate your timetable with your calendar apps such as Outlook, Google Calendar, Apple Calendar and other calendar apps on your smartphone. Any timetable changes will be automatically synced with your calendar. If you wish, you can also receive an email notification of the change. You can turn notifications on in ‘Settings’ (after login).
For more information, watch the video or go the the 'help-page' in MyTimetable. Please note: Joint Degree students Leiden/Delft have to merge their two different timetables into one. This video explains how to do this.
Mode of instruction
This course consists of six interactive lectures, three seminars, and one tutoring session. Students prepare for each class by reading literature of the lecture, so that they can participate in discussions around the topic of the lecture. In the seminars, students will discuss case studies of digital transformation. In tutoring session, students will receive guidance on how to complete their group (and individual) assignment.
Assessment method
We evaluate students based on their individual and group assignments’ quality as well as their participation in course sessions. Two individual assignments and one group assignment are designed for this course. The deadlines and further instructions of the assignments will be communicated to the registered students before the start of the course. The weights of the assignments in the final evaluation are 60 % for the individual assignments (5% and 55%), and 40% for the group assignment. Details of the assessment procedure will be shared with the students that register for the course before it starts. This course does not have a final exam.
Conditions to pass the course:
The weighted average of the individual and the group assignments should be equal to or higher than 6.0 and the grade of each of the assignments should be equal to or higher than 4.0.
To be eligible to pass the course, students should attend all course sessions. In special cases, a student can miss one session (i.e., two hours of the course) for a legitimate justification. In such a case, the student must notify the program coordinator via email (info@sbb.leidenuniv.nl) of such an absence BEFORE the lecture, describing the reason for missing the lecture. If the student does not notify the program coordinator before the lecture, the student will be penalised. Students may be required to provide further documentation to substantiate their case, and class attendance requirements are only waived under exceptional circumstances such as illness.
For the retake, students should repeat individual assignments differently. Details of the retake will be shared with the students that register for the course before it starts. The retake does not include the group assignment. The grade of the group assignment is valid for the current academic year.
Reading list
Example readings:
Fitzgerald, M., Kruschwitz, N., Bonnet, D., & Welch, M. (2014). Embracing digital technology: A new strategic imperative. MIT Sloan Management Review, 55(2): 1-12.
Cennamo, C., Dagnino, G. B., Di Minin, A., & Lanzolla, G. 2020. Managing Digital Transformation: Scope of Transformation and Modalities of Value Co-Generation and Delivery. California Management Review, 62(4): 5–16.
Schallmo, D., Williams, C.A., & Boardman, L. (2017). Digital transformation of business models-best practice, enablers and roadmap. Journal of Innovation Management, 21(8):
1740014-1 – 1740014-17.
A complete reading list will be shared with the students that register for this course before the course starts.
Registration
Every student has to register for courses with the new enrollment tool MyStudyMap. Please see this page for more information.
Please note that it is compulsory to both preregister and confirm your participation for every exam and retake. Not being registered for a course means that you are not allowed to participate in the final exam of the course. Confirming your exam participation is possible until ten days before the exam.
Extensive FAQ's on MyStudymap can be found here.
Contact
For all your questions you can contact info@sbb.leidenuniv.nl
Note: If you are an ICTiBPS student, you can contact the programme coordinator of ICTiBPS for any questions about your program.
Remarks
There is only limited capacity for external students. Please contact the programme Co-ordinator.
Students need to attend all lectures and seminars (not necessarily the tutoring sessions) to be able to pass this course.
Students are responsible for enrolling/unenrolling themselves for (partial) exams/retakes.
Students who do not enroll themselves for an exam/retake by the deadline are not allowed to take the exam/retake.
Students fail the course if any of the partial components (except the exam) that make up the final mark of the course is assessed below 4.0.
Students fail the course if the grade for the (final) exam is assessed below 5.0.
The final grade is expressed as a whole or half number between 1.0 and 10.0, including both limits. The result is not to be expressed as a number between 5.0 and 6.0.
If one of the components of the final mark constitutes a component that assesses attendance or class participation, students cannot take a retake for this component. Therefore, students fail the course if their mark for this component is less than 4.0.
Partial grades, inclusive the exam grade will not be rounded. If partial grades will be communicated, it is possible partial grades are rounded, but unrounded partial grades will be used in the calculation of the final grade. The final grade will be rounded at 0.5 (5.49 will rounded down to a 5 and a 5.5 will be rounded up to a 6.0).
Students pass the course if the final grade is 6.0 or higher (5.49 will rounded down to a 5 and a 5.5 will be rounded up to a 6.0).
It is not possible to do retakes for group assignments. Therefore, if students fail the group assignment component, they fail the course.
For courses, for which class participation is an assessment component, students may not be penalised for an absence if the student has a legitimate justification for this absence. The student must notify the program coordinator via email (info@sbb.leidenuniv.nl) of such an absence BEFORE the lecture, describing the reason for missing the lecture. If the student does not notify the program coordinator before the lecture, the student will be penalised. Students may be required to provide further documentation to substantiate their case, and class attendance requirements are only waived under exceptional circumstances such as illness.
Students who are entitled to more exam/retake time must report to info@sbb.leidenuniv.nl 10 days before the exam/retake takes place.