Abstract
The converging, digitized, disruptive, and globalized world is transforming the way society exists and human beings live. These changes have helped us to collaborate and contribute in exciting and unforeseen ways by creating connected societies worldwide. Technology drives growth across industries and connects people thereby promoting further opportunities and changing the standard of living. IoT has enabled connectivity among people exponentially and advancement in the speed of internet connections have improved accessibility among users to acquire information and services worldwide around the clock. In many parts of the world, the internet has established itself as the primary medium to connect the societies. Digital transformation has made it essential for enterprises for changing their strategies to make sure that they are connected all the time virtually. This has enabled development of new and innovative approaches in education, healthcare, public service entertainment, etc. The aim of this chapter is to provide an overview of the concept of connected societies and its importance.
TopIntroduction
A hyperconnected society refers to a society in which there are large connections between people themselves, people to objects and between things and this is facilitated by digitisation and internet of things (IoT) (Chung et al, 2017). This is happening at such a rapid pace that all people and companies will be interconnected across the world which will make that information accessible across. Half of the world’s population, are internet users and the number of people using mobile devices is increasing at a fast pace every day. It is estimated that more than 5 billion people have mobile devises and the over half of these connections are that of smartphones (Silver, 2019). The main basis for connected community is Internet (IoT) of Things and Internet of People (IoP).
Connected society is the result of strategic intent from companies and individuals for connecting on a regular basis and this has happened due to digital transformation. Digital transformation is happening across the world. Concepts of artificial intelligence, industry 4.0 and technological advancements have helped to revolutionize the way we behave as a society. It has also helped to bring people together in real life. Enterprises are running digitally and especially in the last 6 months where Covid-19 has wreaked havoc in the world. We are meeting each other virtually, doing business virtually and growing virtually. In short doing everything in a connected society. Digital transformations and innovations in this area have helped us to be interconnected.
Some of the articles in the area of digital transformation are analysed here to get deeper insights into the applications and areas where there are gaps for further studies which can provide better understating of different issues..
Reis et al (2018) reviewed more than 200 cited articles and found applications of digital transformation. They found that digitisation is a key issue but it is a necessity in this world where technology is absolutely critical for any business process. They found that though digital transformation is happening in all industries and sectors. But this is rampant and more evident in some industries like healthcare and some sectors like public sector. This study gave output of more than 200 literatures and so can be used by future researchers.
A study by Ebert and Duarte (2018) suggested that the digital transformation goals can be viewed on social and economic perspective. The main objective of economic perspective is to increase income generation and productivity by implementing new and innovative business model. Whereas the objectives of social perspective can be of numerous reasons like foster a collaborative culture in industry and society, face lift the education industry through digital transformation, improve the digital accessibility of quality services to the population.
Manda and Backhouse (2018) investigated the adoption of digital transformation to promote inclusive growth in South Africa. The major challenges identified were poor coordination and fragmentation and poor cohesion among government, business and society. It was suggested that all the stakeholders should adopt a more integrative approach to create a connected society.
Hausberg et al (2019) in their article examined applications of digital transformation in areas like marketing management, innovation management and finance management. They studied different literature available in these functional areas as far as digital transformation is concerned. They found that in other functional areas of management, digital transformation research is less used. The main idea of the article was to make a model framework incorporating applications of digital transformation for future research insights.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Connected Society: The connected society means a society in which people and people, people and objects, things and things, online and offline, one to one, one to many and many to many are connected using digital technology or the digital based society that stores, analyses and manages data collected by sensors and mobile terminals through a network.
Internet of People: Internet of people refers to the digitalization of relationships between people and the collection, processing, and application of personal data. Since IoP focuses on personal information collection, it can be considered as a learning medium of how people interact with sensory data.
Industry Revolution 4.0: Industry revolution 4.0 uses traditional manufacturing in combination with latest technologies. The term is now called as I4.0 or I4 came in the year 2011 from a German high-tech strategy which helped in digitisation of manufacturing.
Digitization: This is a process in which information is changed from physical entity to a digital format.
Enterprise: According to Cambridge dictionary, an enterprise is an organisation or a business entity formulated to earn money.
Strategy: It is a general plan to achieve one or more long-term or overall goals under conditions of uncertainty.
Internet of Things: Internet of things is defined as a system by which data can be transferred over a network without any human to human intervention.
Social Media as Medium of Connection: Social media has become the all-time favourable medium among all age groups. The first ever social media website Six Degrees was launched in 1997. This enabled any user to create a profile and facilitate sharing of ideas and thoughts through virtual communities.