Abstract:

The definition of digital transformation (DT) is not consensual among the stakeholders involved in this issue, particularly in organizations, which leads to several perspectives of what it really means. These perspectives range from a focus on technology, to digital customer engagement, to new digital business models and so one. The lack of clarity often results in piecemeal initiatives, missed opportunities and false starts in the organization digitalization.

From the organizations’ point of view, DT can be seen as a deep and accelerating transformation with regard processes, activities, competencies and models, in order to take advantage of the changes and opportunities offered by the inclusion of digital technologies into an organization. In this context, the adoption of technology-based change focus on four technology pillars:
(1) Cloud Computing,
(2) Mobile Connectivity,
(3) Social, and
(4) Big Data and associated analytics.

The more significant use of the pillars of DT has been driven by innovation accelerators, which include, among other solutions, IoT, Robotics, 3D Printing, Artificial Intelligence, Augmented and Virtual Reality, Cognitive Systems and Next Generation (NextGen) Security.

In accordance with the stated previously, it could be claimed that to the DT be successful in an organization it is required an adaptation/alteration. The transformation must accommodate de DT and must be aligned with the business in order to create value for the organization/business on one hand. On the other hand, the four DT pillars aligned with DT enablers contributes to organizations more agile. Organizational agility could be defined as the capability of an organization to rapidly change or adapt in response to changes in the market. A high degree of organizational agility can help an organization to react successfully to the emergence of new competitors, the development of new industry-changing technologies or sudden shifts in overall market conditions. Organizational agility helps balancing speed of response, communication and information sharing with thoughtful coordination and long-term scalability. In this context, organizational agility is the organization capacity to incorporate new elements such as innovations or improvements in order to enhance its performance.

In this context, the teaching of DT both at the higher education and at the training education must be urgently aligned with these transformations. In order to future DT professionals learn to solve problems with great agility. Such agility is also required to the organizations. The main objective of this paper it is to propose a curriculum for a DT course in the higher education with the focus on both technological and management perspectives in order the new challenges of DT in organizations.

Keywords:

Digital Transformation, Curriculum, High Education, Technology pillars, Innovation accelerators.