The Digital Era 2

1 Companies: the Great Transformation

Closely integrated into the vast majority of economic activities, digital technology is disrupting habits, transforming the market approach and profoundly modifying industrial organization. This a microeconomic debate, since digital mastery allows new entrants to approach customers directly, a way of being that companies have rarely experienced: the new digital economy is thus giving rise to imaginative and adaptive companies that are breaking from the past. Entire sections of commercial activity like big hotel chains are, therefore, forced to question their own organization and their priorities in order to stem the losses suffered by their customers captured by digital platforms that are specifically built for the web.

Initially insidious and with a marginal effect, the disruption introduced by digital technology is now plainly noticeable; one may describe the disturbances that destabilize the previous trade balances as a disruption, particularly for these services that have long lived under a regulated regime such as transport, housing or distribution to the general public¹. A real disruption is much more disturbing for our habits than was the “new economy” that was promised by records at the end of the 20^th Century before being [wrongly!] forgetten after the Internet crisis, which befell the United States and the industrial countries around the year 2000²! As a direct consequence of digital technology, a transformation is underway that ...