Professor Eusebio Scornavacca, UB’s Parsons Professor of Digital Innovation and director of the Center for Digital Communications, Commerce and Culture, recently gave a presentation at the Mid-Atlantic CIO Forum, where CIOs from some of the largest information technology companies in the region gathered to network and share best practices. Prof. Scornavacca’s presentation, which was given alongside presentations from Scott Haglund of Microsoft and Matthew Saskin of Dimension Data, focused on future-proofing businesses and thriving in this new era of digital transformation.

According to Prof. Scornavacca, “Digital transformation is about transforming organizations through the use of digital technologies, business models and strategy in order to improve performance and, above all, create value to stakeholders.”

In order to future-proof their organizations, business leaders need to develop key organizational capabilities and individual competencies, recognizing the gaps between what their organization is currently doing and what they could be doing differently in light of this emergent digital ecosystem. At the University of Baltimore, for example, the recent addition of the cybersecurity management degree—launching in the fall 2019—aims to fill one such gap.

Indeed, future proofing is about taking steps today to ensure that a company has a future – it’s an essential part of any organization’s planning and visioning, and captures resource needs, evolutions in technology and productivity, and the efficacy of the work itself. From this process can come not only a more stable work environment, but also new ideas, new approaches and new products.

Brian Bark, CIO of Sinclair Broadcast Group, attended the presentation at the Mid-Atlantic CIO Forum and shared more about the professor’s presentation.

“I found Eusebio’s perspective on digital transformation and its ‘fluid ecosystem’ quite interesting and thought provoking,” said Bark. “He certainly has a good feel for sitting at the intersection between the business and technology and its impact on driving behaviors and outcomes.”

In addition to the CIO Forum, Prof. Scornavacca has given his presentation to industry players in Finland, Egypt, Brazil, China, France and Italy.

Scornavacca points out that most digital transformation strategies fail due to excessive focus on technological disruptors, and too much attention on “digitalization” of silos as the ultimate goal instead of looking holistically at the organization.

“The main goal should be value creation and enhancing performance,” he said. “While digital disruption is key, this does not mean we can overlook more traditional forms of disruption.”

Learn more about Professor Scornavacca and the Department of Information Systems and Decision Science.

Learn more about UB MBA Cybersecurity and Organizational Resilience specialization. Coming in the 2019, is UB’s new Master of Science in Cybersecurity Management program. Look for forthcoming announcements about that program.

Thank you to UB English major, Kyle Fierstien for interviewing Prof. Scornavacca for this post.

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