Today I want to talk about what a "number" is. Digital transformation, digital assets, digital product... These words are heard everywhere today. In Russia, national programs are launched and even the ministry is renamed, but reading articles and reports one comes across all round phrases and slurred definitions. And recently, at work, I was at a “high-level” meeting, where representatives of a respected institute that trains personnel in the field of information technology answered the question “What is the difference between informatization and digitalization” that “it’s the same thing - just digitalization is such a hype word."
I think it's time to figure it out.
If you try to find clear definitions somewhere, there are none. Usually they start from technologies (they say, where they introduce big data, artificial intelligence, and the like, there is digital transformation). Sometimes human participation is put at the forefront (they say if robots displace people, this is digitalization).
I have another suggestion. I propose to find a criterion that will help distinguish "digital" from "ordinary". Having found the criterion, we will come to a simple and understandable definition.
In order not to become obsolete, this criterion should not appeal either to technology (they appear like mushrooms after rain), or to the participation of people in the technological process (this story has already been “worked out” by the technological revolution).
Let's look at the business model and the product. At the same time, I call a product something (a product or service) that carries value (for example, a cake, a car, or a haircut at a hairdresser), and a business model is a set of processes aimed at producing value and delivering it to the consumer.
Historically, the product has been “normal” (say “analogue” if you like, but “a loaf of analog bread” sounds pretentious to me). There have been and will be a lot of ordinary goods and services in the world. All of them are united by the fact that it takes resources to produce each copy of such a product (as the cat Matroskin said, in order to sell something unnecessary, you need to buy something unnecessary). It takes flour and water to make a loaf of bread, it takes a lot of things to make a car, and it takes time to cut someone's hair.
Every time, for every copy.
And there are such products, the cost of production of each new copy of which is equal to zero (or tends to zero). For example, you recorded a song, took a photo, developed a program for an iPhone-android and that's it ... You sell them over and over again, but, firstly, you don’t run out of them, and secondly, each new copy costs you nothing.
The idea is not new. In world history there are many examples of products, the production of each copy of which cost nothing. For example, the sale of plots on the moon or shares closer to us in some financial pyramid (for example, MMM tickets). Usually it was something illegal (and now I’m not even talking about the criminal code, but about the very law of conservation of “energy-matter-life-universe-and-everything-such”, which Matroskin the cat voiced).
However, with the development of technology (the advent of computers, computer networks, and everything derived from them - cloud technologies, artificial intelligence, big data, etc.), a unique opportunity has appeared to copy products endlessly and for free. Someone took it literally and simply copied money on a photocopier (but this is again illegal), but the sale of digitized musical compositions on iTunes, digital photos in photobanks, applications in Google Play or Appstore - all this is legal and quite profitable , because, as you remember, each new copy brings money and does not cost anything. This is the digital product.
A digital asset is something that allows you to produce a product (replicate a product or provide a service), the cost of production of each subsequent copy of which tends to zero (for example, your online store through which you sell something or a database of nuclear reactor sensors that allows you to make predictions and conduct experiments).
Digital transformation is the transition from the production of physical products to the production of digital products, as well as (and / or) the transition to business models that use digital assets.
As you can see, everything is simple. Such is the transformation.
Source: habr.com