11/28/2018

Being Open To Learn From Others In The Digital Age

Digitalization challenges can be overcome

It’s often said that Germany and digitalization don’t quite go together. Many experts consider German companies to be lagging behind. Headlines have them “battling” with the digital transformation, and weekly news magazine Der Spiegel recently rated their progress “D minus.” So, maybe Germany isn’t exactly driving digitalization, but I wouldn’t see its position as entirely hopeless. A dash more optimism wouldn’t hurt any of us.

There are different ways one can meet the challenges posed by digitalization. First off, we shouldn’t talk about “battles”. Digitalization isn’t an opponent to be knocked down, but something that companies can turn to their advantage. True, the digital transformation challenges our tried-and-tested notions, but it also promises an infinite number of new opportunities. Every company has to choose the path that’s right for it: it might organise digitalization on its own, buy in what it needs or rely on venture capital, business incubators or start-up accelerators. There’s no one right way of achieving this goal, only a multitude of opportunities to be gained.

For quite a while now, Douglas has been driving digitalization on its own steam. We were a pioneer in the field of e-commerce, setting up our first online shop in 2000 – a time when the internet had really only just become a broad-based phenomenon. So we’ve been living digitalization for some time.

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