The swift growth and increasing sophistication of computing technology has profoundly affected the global economic landscape. Many of the winners of the digital revolution are companies with traditional industry backgrounds. Several possible explanations are found for this trend. For example, the scale of the digital revolution has made it near impossible for legacy corporations to continue ignoring growth dynamics and innovation opportunities.
Outdated companies undergo a long overdue shakeup, so business leaders around the world have become more and more interested about digital technologies into having into their core business models. We will look into radical effect that digital technologies are having on traditional industries, it could be surging user base for remote education or snowballing development and adoption of online will kits
Breaking Down the Digital Technology Revolution
The digital technology revolution has its origins since the time of the invention of the transistor in 1947. Throughout the years, the traditional structures of the global financial system have become the largest economic transformation in history. With the transformation, it has been driven by a massive multi-sector shift to obsolete mechanical and analog technology versus digital computing and communications technology. With computing technology, it has become more and more seen in everyday lives, the economy has experienced a drastic change in capital flows, industrial output etc.
Traditional Industries That Have Been Reinvented by Technology
Here are some ideas of the expansive scale of digital innovation across the global economy, these traditional industries are common and have been completely reinvented by the digital technology revolution.
1. Computer Support
Technology reinvention would not be complete without having computer support as easy as possible. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, corporations and large companies shifted to remote work. Since not all companies have enough budget for this change, some of them chose to use remote desktop software in order to continue their work without having to have a risk of getting COVID-19 virus.
2. Education
Traditional education institutions have been forced to convert to digital technology to safely switch to online learning because of the unprecedented challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, to avoid congregations of students, schools and universities have turned to remote learning platforms like Zoom and Blackboard to host lectures and teach. Despite the hardships, education institutions became adept at the digital revolution, rapidly shifting to online learning.
3. Retail Shopping
The vast transformation of the retail shopping sector is probably one of the most common examples of technology-driven industry-wide reinvention. The revolution of the retail shopping industry began with the development of e-commerce technology, this made brick and mortar shopping malls into competition with huge companies such as Amazon.
Amazon might be considered a winner of the competition for retail shopping market dominance. By the time everything has been settled, a sizable segment of the retail industry has recognized the commercial value of owning and operating a dedicated online platform. With this, it led to the establishment of several new e-commerce marketplaces and hundreds of online brand-specific retail distribution channels.
4. Religion and Funeral Industry
Even religious gathering, where people offer their time depending on their religion, is not immune to technological reinvention, especially for the year 2020. When COVID-19 restrictions began prohibiting mass gathering, many religions took to using video conferencing platforms to host online mass or religious offerings.
Perhaps the funeral business is as well affected by technological reinvention, with the same reason as above, video conferencing helps families to host online viewing of families mourning where members are avoiding the risk of getting COVID-19 because of mass gatherings.
5. Medical Industry
The medical industry has been one of the targets of technological advancement, from the creation of electronic health databases to advanced procedures of creating personalized medicine. Technological innovations in the medical industry have propelled major reinventions in the traditional approaches to primary, secondary, or even quaternary care.
Photo credit: stockvault.net