If you’ve ever bought a desk from IKEA’s online store, browsed Airbnb’s house map, or ordered a custom 3D-printed Lego set, you have witnessed digitalization in action. 

It’s something we encounter at various points throughout each day, but what is digitalization, exactly? And why should MBA students study it?

To find out, BusinessBecause spoke to Stefan Henningson (pictured right), a professor of digitalization on the Copenhagen Business School MBA, and Piyush Prasad, a CBS MBA graduate currently working for the green tech firm European Energy. 

What is digitalization? 

According to Stefan, “Digitalization means transforming businesses to reap the opportunities that digital technologies give us.”

It’s a process that’s been happening gradually over the past number of decades, booming with the birth of the Internet in 1969, and then escalating with the advent of cloud-based technology in the 1990s, giving life to everyday companies like Uber, Netflix, and Airbnb. 

What’s different about the phenomenon now, though, is both the pace at which it’s happening and the range of business sectors it’s affecting. 

“In the last decade, [digitalization] has accelerated,” Stefan says. “We’re seeing change in both customer-facing activities, such as how we interact with the customers, and more recently, also in what we sell—value propositions that are digital.”

The automotive industry is one example of how the value proposition of business products are becoming intertwined with new technology. Often containing built-in navigation, sensors, and entertainment facilities, modern-day cars have come a long way from simple vehicles designed to get from ‘a’ to ‘b’. 

Plus, with artificial intelligence (AI) becoming increasingly integrated with customer service-facing tasks across all industries—such as in the form of automated chatbots—it is becoming imperative that companies have structures in place to allow them to keep on top of new developments.

“[Digitalization] requires that we have innovation processes that are geared to specifically finding and discovering the potential of digital technologies. Companies require organizational structures and KPIs that are designed to support the introduction of new technology,” Stefan says. 

It’s therefore important for businesses to have leaders who understand digitalization in a broader context—knowledge which can be gained by studying a digital-focused MBA. 

What skills can you learn on a digital-focused MBA?

When former software engineer Piyush (pictured right) first made the decision to fly halfway around the world from India to study an MBA in CBS, he was looking for a way to pivot from his current career path, which he had begun to find limiting in terms of his professional growth.  

“I decided that after my MBA, I would try to get back into the tech world,” he says.

With its intimate class size of roughly 40 students and core modules teaching critical skills like accounting and data analytics, the program appeared perfect for Piyush’s goals.

The MBA also offered Digitalization as a core module, with the option to further specialize by choosing a Digitalization concentration. The concentration teaches students courses such as Digital Platforms and Innovation Strategies in a Digital World.

Of course, given his career history, Piyush already felt adept at navigating technology. He was however less familiar with how to deal with the human side of it: “It was important to learn how people interact with technology and how that adds value to the organization.”

This included taking classes in the Digitalization concentration, such as Digital Delivery Models, which focuses on giving students strategies on how to introduce new technology into office spaces. 

Just some of the essential skills that Piyush picked up were important considerations in ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) implementation (software capable of automating various business processes), complex problem solving and—perhaps the most important—communication. 

“Not everybody is as technology savvy as maybe I am or my peers are, so we need to ensure that everyone understands what we are saying.”

How can students use digitalization in their careers? 

As one of Europe’s most digitally competitive countries, there are plenty of career opportunities for MBA grads with specialist knowledge in digital transformation in Denmark.

“There are new jobs created in Denmark all the time, and they're looking for people. They have a shortage of qualified candidates for many of the jobs in the digital space. So there are opportunities,” Stefan explains.  

CBS MBA graduates go on to work for top companies such as L'Oréal Paris, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Danske Bank, and McKinsey.  

After graduating, Piyush managed to land a project manager role in the procurement team with a leading sustainable energy company, European Energy. He credits the digitalization skills he has been able to bring to the company with being key to his success. 

“Right now, they are all based on pen-and-paper and Excel. So, they wanted a software system which can automate all that process,” he says. 

As part of his responsibility to digitalize the department, Piyush draws on many of the skills he learned during his MBA, such as navigating stakeholders and effectively advocating for the introduction of new technology to senior management.

“When I speak to people now, I focus on the explaining the results that they can get from using a piece of software or a particular process,” he says. 

As Piyush’s career trajectory demonstrates, learning how to employ new digital technologies can make you a desirable job candidate across a wide array of future-focused industries.