07/14/2021

Digital Transformation Requires Cultural Evolution

Digital disruptions have changed how everyone works

Over the last decade, longstanding scholarly publishers have been metamorphizing before our eyes, shedding old ways of doing business and taking up broad initiatives to reinvent what publishers do and why they matter. Many of these mutations are motivated by the pace of digital disruptions in our globally networked information economy. In relative terms, the last decade’s rate of change in how we consume and create information outpaces the previous hundred years.

Our industry has been wrestling with many challenges related to technological disruptions and demands for publishing innovations for some time now. On the surface, the work required to bring print journals into the digital world appears to be largely technological. However, a comprehensive and lasting transformation from a print-centric business to a digital-first business requires equal investment in the technological as well as the cultural. Digital innovations are more of a human science than computer science.

In a recent panel during the virtual London Book Fair, Sam Herbert of 67 Bricks introduced the discussion topic of digital transformation as a “highly emotive subject.” Sam was joined by Harriet Bell of Emerald Publishing and Scott Williams of De Gruyter, who shared their experiences with broad-scale strategic reorientations of the organizations’ epicenters. Although each has uniquely designed plans and visions for recalibrating their businesses toward fully digital publishing products and services, both Harriet and Scott spoke of the distinctly human nature of their digital renovations.

Please select this link to read the complete article from The Scholarly Kitchen.