Page - 15 - in Digital Entrepreneurship - Impact on Business and Society

3 DigitalMaturityModel A DEM can be adopted in many ways and is determined by various factors. Although this chapter focusesmostly on theDEMs of individual entrepreneurs or start-up businesses, it is also useful to consider them in terms of entire organisa- tions. Each entrepreneur or employee is within certain organisational boundaries; therefore, it is useful to consider a model that potentially accommodates DEMs within existing companies or organisations. In 2019, Deloitte and MIT Sloan Management Review developed a Digital MaturityModel.Basedonamulti-annual surveyofmore than3500executives and managers, the Digital Maturity Model was proposed as a tool to enable digital transformation. Digital maturity refers to the state of being ready for digital transformation. The Digital Maturity Model represents a tool that can enable a digital transformation and represents thefirst industry standard for assessingdigital maturity. There are five business dimensions that are used to evaluate the digital capability of a business: customers, strategy, technology, operations and organi- sation and culture. In this respect, the customersdimensionaccounts for activities such as customer engagement and customer experience. Businesses should strive to achieve a situ- ation inwhich their customerswill see themas their digital partner. Thedimension of strategy focuses on the management of the brand, ecosystems, stakeholders, innovation and aspects of strategic management. It aims to increase businesses’ competitive advantage through digital initiatives that become part of an overall strategy. Another critical dimension is the technology itself. This dimension is the crucial foundation of the digital strategy as it facilitates the storage and secure processingof data tomeet customers’demands. In this dimension, businesses need to evaluate aspects such as the network, security and applications. The operations dimension refers to issues such as agile change management and real-time ana- lytics.As such, it relates to the fosteringandexecutionof tasks andprocessesusing digital technologies to improve the efficiencyandeffectivenessof thebusiness.The final dimension to consider is organisation and culture. Businesses should aim to develop an organisational culture that supports the achievement of digital trans- formation and flexibility to achieve that goal. The essential aspects of this dimension are leadership and governance. Assessing the Digital Maturity Model according to these dimensions facilitates the assessment of current digital capa- bilities, decision-making in termsof prioritising skills based on the business’goals and, eventually, measurement of the impact of digital initiatives. Depending on a company’s ambitions, itmaydecide to investmoreor lessmoney into someaspects of the Digital Maturity Model. Figure 2 provides an overview of the Digital MaturityModel dimensions and related elements. The Digital Maturity Model, with its core components of customer, strategy, technology, operations and organisation and culture spread across 179 digital criteria, is a suitable audit tool to assess the digitalmaturity of an organisation and to identify the key practices of companies that are developing into more mature Developing aDigital EntrepreneurialMindset for Data-Driven… 15