The Dentons Data Summit, an annual event held on June 6 this year, provided rich content that responded to the challenges faced by our clients as they work to transition their businesses to the digital economy.
The Data Summit reflected issues and topics that are current to the majority of Canadian entities, either public or private, and provided context for how each topic area is impacting companies' rapid digital transformation.
Digital economy versus digital technology versus digital transformation
Digitization in the 1980s through to the early 2000s saw the adoption of computer technologies to digitize discrete functions. The new digital economy is much more than that. It builds on these technologies to create a mobile, electronically connected infrastructure that is characterized by three key components: (i) infrastructure (hardware, software, telecoms, networks, human capital, etc.); (ii) e-business (how business is conducted, any process that an organization conducts over computer-mediated networks); and (iii) e-commerce (a transfer of goods via an online network).