Columbia Business School’s David Rogers teaches executive education students about digital transformation concepts.

When David Rogers first started teaching an executive education class called Digital Marketing at Columbia Business School back in 2010, he was breaking new ground in the business education world. At the time, he says, no other business school had an exec ed offering with the word “digital” in the title and Columbia became the first business school to offer an in-depth class for executives that explored the then-new concept of digital transformation, he says.

Initially, there was a bit of confusion about the topic of the class; some who initially signed up thought it was a class in marketing, says Rogers, a faculty member at Columbia and author of The Digital Transformation Playbook. During those early iterations of that class, half of the people who showed up were not marketers at all, he says, rather “they were just people trying to figure out the impact of the digital world on their business.” He subsequently changed the title of the course to Digital Marketing Strategy to “emphasize that it was not going to be just about advertising or marketing tactics.”

Fast-forward nearly 15 years later, and “digital transformation” has become a well-known phrase that has earned its place in the business school world lexicon. Over 10,000 people have taken Rogers’ online executive education course Digital Strategies for Business Transformation, an updated version of the class he developed eight years ago which helps managers embrace new strategies and business models to help their organization succeed in the digital age. Rogers also teaches a second on-campus course on the topic, Leading Digital Transformation: From Strategy to Organizational Change, geared more towards senior executives.

THE RISE OF DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION COURSES 

One doesn’t have to look far today to find an executive education business class on digital transformation. Digital transformation can sometimes seem like an abstract concept to students, but professors teaching these courses say their classes help make the topic tangible and relevant to students and their careers. Columbia is now one of several dozen business schools in the U.S. from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School to the University of California Berkeleys’ Haas School of Business that offer executive education classes in the subject. Today, there is no shortage of students interested in the topic and classes often sell out, professors say, as legacy businesses struggle to keep up with the frenetic pace of new digital tools in the marketplace from block chain to artificial intelligence that have the potential to upend and transform businesses.

“When we first started, there were like a small cohort of schools doing this,” Rogers says. “Now I can’t even keep track of all the people offering courses, which I think is a good thing because it shows there is a lot of need in the market.

“Every major business education institution is doing executive training and education in digital transformation. This is part of their agenda now.”

HOW TO AVOID BECOMING THE NEXT KODAK

One of the schools that has made a reputation for itself as a leader in teaching digital transformation is the Wharton School of Business, where professor Rahul Kapoor first developed an executive education program around the topic of digital transformation right after covid, during a time when the prickly issues associated with digital transformation started to “permeate almost every sector,” says Kapoor, a professor of management at Wharton.

“Today this trend has “only accelerated with the advent of artificial intelligence entering the workplace,” he notes.

Wharton’s Rahul Kapoor teaching his Leading Digital Transformation on campus.

Kapoor’s course, Leading Digital Transformation, is now entering its fourth year as an exec ed offering and has become a popular offering at the school, with two different iterations of the course, one on-campus and one live online. He starts off each new class he teaches by talking about the iconic camera and photography company Eastman Kodak and how it failed to successfully transform itself as the industry shifted quickly from film-based photography to digital photography.

It’s an example that quickly resonates with students, who see that the companies that they work for are facing different – yet similar– challenges to those that Kodak faced 30 years ago.

“The nature of the problems that Kodak faced in the 1980s and 1990s are no different from the nature of the problems that these companies are facing today as they are being impacted by these emerging digital technologies,” Kapoor says. “The next Kodak could be Google, Facebook or Microsoft today.”

A NEW FRAMEWORK FOR APPROACHING DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

In his class, Kapoor gives his students a framework on how to lead the process of digital transformation at their company, no matter how complex or challenging the technology may seem, he says. They discuss how to generate an environment of collaboration, motivate colleagues and think strategically about the decisions that will have long-term consequences for  their business. Students also get a chance to do some hand-on work, with a simulation where participants get a chance to run their own platform business.

“They do this in a competitive environment with other students and we are able to get some competitive juices flowing as well,” Kapoor says.

“We develop frameworks which are not technology specific, but problem specific.” says Wharton’s Rahul Kapoor.

However, he emphasizes that the point of his class is not to teach students the technical details of technologies like artificial intelligence or block chain, but rather how to utilize them effectively in a business.

“We develop frameworks which are not technology specific, but problem specific. There’s a very significant leadership angle to it,” Kapoor says. “Almost every participant that I speak with after the program tells me, ‘You know, it was clear to us that this is not about technology. It’s about the transformation of an organization, of a business.'”

COLUMBIA PROFESSOR GIVES STUDENTS A ROADMAP THEY CAN FOLLOW

At Columbia, David Rogers teaches the topic by drawing upon his research with dozens of Fortune 100 companies who have struggled with digital changes in their organizations over the years. In class, he touches upon cases from companies who have struggled but ultimately succeeded with digital transformation, like Walmart, The New York Times, and Mastercard.

“Most companies who try this fail, but by now, we have many examples of companies who have succeeded,” says Rogers, who published a sequel to his first book last fall called The Digital Transformation Roadmap. Both his classes draw upon material and research from his books, he says.

“For digital transformation to work, everyone in the organization has to have a clear sense of where we need to go and why,” says Columbia’s David Rogers.

In the online version of the class that he teaches — Digital Strategies for Business Transformation — he talks with students about how to rethink strategy when approaching digital transformation at their companies because many of the “tools and frameworks that we’ve taught for decades in business schools are no longer really the best fit for the dynamics of strategy today,” he says.

When it comes to digital transformation, students need to take a fresh approach to nearly everything, from how they approach customer strategy and  competition to how they think about  data and the process of innovation.

“Our value proposition should be continuously evolving in order to keep up with shifting and unmet needs in the market”  he says. “Just because you had something that was great for consumers yesterday doesn’t mean they simply may not need it tomorrow. So how do you not only respond to that but anticipate that?”

OVERCOMING TYPICAL BARRIERS TO DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

In Rogers’ other on-campus class on the topic, Leading Digital Transformation: From Strategy to Organizational Change, he touches more on how students can overcome what he calls the “five established barriers” that keep established legacy businesses from thriving when it comes to driving innovation and incorporating new digital technologies. Industry executives who have had success in this area come to the class and share their front-line stories with students as well.

“The organization itself has so much iteration built into it,” he says. “A lot of companies are trying to transform, but they lack a shared vision. For digital transformation to work, everyone in the organization has to have a clear sense of where we need to go and why.”

Some of the students who have taken Rogers’ class have gone on to make great strides with implementing digital transformation strategies at their respective companies.  For example, one of his former student works at Audible and has been able to implement some bold and creative strategies using some of the techniques he learned in class, says Rogers. Another former student works in the insurance industry and has been able to shift to a role at his company where is leading a digital accelerator lab and implementing new technologies.

“He started out with finding the business problem, innovating quickly, testing and then building it out, “says Rogers. “When you’re part of a big company and you find something that works, you’re able to scale it and make it really big.”

TAKING THE LEAP OUTSIDE THE CLASSROOM

Indeed, students who take these digital transformation classes find that the excitement around the subject doesn’t just end in the classroom. Wharton’s Kapoor often holds a webinar a few months after his class has ended to ask students how they incorporate what they’ve learned from the program into their roles. He also says a group of  students from one of the in-person classes that he taught recently formed a WhatsApp group to talk about how they are approaching digital innovations at their companies.

“They are now sharing every week with each other how what they learned from the program is helping them do their jobs better and it’s become a very nice community,” Kapoor says. “It’s clear to us that many of the things that we discuss have not only helped them to understand what these complex issues are, but to be more effective in their roles.”

DON’T MISS: 10 Exec Ed Courses For Digital Transformation You Can (Still) Take In 2024 and The AI Boom In Executive Education: What You Can Study Right Now At The World’s Top B-Schools

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