The term Digital Economy, which gained popularity in 1995 with the bestseller “Digital Economy – Promise and Peril in the Age of Networked Intelligence”, written by Canadian Don Tapscott, still lacks an exact definition.
In his book, Tapscott presents 12 themes related to the Digital Economy vp compliance email lists that, according to him, differentiate it from the “common”, traditional economy. The author highlights as differences, basically, a significant change in the way information and economic flows travel, in an increasingly unimpeded manner, with knowledge as the main backdrop.
Changes in the figures of the producer and consumer, who are increasingly interconnected and interdependent, as well as a reformulation of the very concept of what is understood by a product, by a commodity, define this new economic scenario.
New concepts for new times
Today, the main asset, the “flagship” product of a company in the era of the Digital Economy no longer necessarily needs to be something physical, but can be something completely virtual, materially intangible.
This creates new possibilities for the insertion of different actors in the economy, since the basis for the creation of new products, the necessary “raw material”, becomes much more intellectual and subtle than that used in the creation of a physical product, establishing a production and value chain with previously unthinkable characteristics.
Furthermore, the establishment of an expanded global network of producers and consumers generates new markets, new possibilities for action in global dynamics, allowing companies and consumers to interact in a different way, less restrictive and not essentially conditioned by the issue of territoriality, of borders themselves, as occurred in the traditional economy.
The digitalization of the economy
The digitalization of the economy, in this sense, requires much more than a simple migration or expansion of sales platforms, making the need for a true reengineering of production processes in existing companies and a new and radical way of conceiving the business models of the future almost imperative.
An interesting example that illustrates one of these facets of the Digital Economy is given by Tom Goodwin, in an article for the website techcrunch.com, when he says that “UBER, the world’s largest taxi company, doesn’t own any cars. Facebook , the world’s most popular communications company, doesn’t create any content. Alibaba, the world’s most profitable resale website, doesn’t have any inventory. And Airbnb, the world’s largest rental platform, doesn’t own any of the accommodations it advertises.”
These examples highlight the new opportunities that are opening up, but at the same time, they also show us the challenges that arise in this increasingly competitive market, which is often based on premises that are different from the way traditional companies operated until recently.
Innovative products and processes
The scenario that emerges is one of increasing interdependence between the agents involved in the production and consumption processes, with a fluidity and instantaneity of the kind that allows an international banking transaction to be carried out with just a touch on a cell phone screen, which allows a globally complex transaction to begin with a simple click of the mouse when purchasing a piece of clothing from a Chinese online store, for example.
With the globalization of the economy, economic and tax barriers – which until recently restricted companies from acting in accordance with national strategic planning – are becoming increasingly less important, and states are increasingly unable to control economic flows. As a result, companies themselves are operating in a partially cross-border environment, gaining new markets while also gaining new competitors.
Hence, the need arises for new and innovative products to be launched onto the market, products that can provide the consumer with a new and almost revolutionary consumption experience and that, at the same time, can aggregate other sub-products and experiences from this initial purchase, creating a true platform that radiates from this “center”, this main product.
The logic of the platform must be the prevailing logic in the Digital Economy
In an article available on the blog economiadeservicos.com, Erica Gonzales, when discussing the challenges of the industry in the era of the Digital Economy, says that: “ The industry is directed to a phase of challenges, where it is necessary to discover a new industrial product, with greater services included in this product and, the more services this product has, the more expensive the final value of the good offered”.
This procedure is what adds value to the product. It is an example of this with Apple's iPhone, which comes with a series of applications such as iCloud, Apple Music and iTunes that can add value to the main product, bringing the consumer the constant innovation they seek and at the same time differentiating themselves from competing products.
The aim is to create a business platform made up of multiple services. The main business is no longer the material production itself but the management of the data generated by these platforms.
This form of network structuring grows the greater the number of people connected to it, that is, the greater the number of users within a platform, the greater the added value and the greater the security and competitiveness that the company will have in the market, regardless of the service provided or product developed.
