Fall 2025   Volume 68 • Issue 1

Digital Transformation

Our fall issue features contributions on digital transformation, social innovation, board governance, and partnerships

Table of Contents


Digital Transformation
86% of digital transformation projects fall short of their objectives – to succeed, firms need to view transformation not just as a technological challenge, but also as a company-spanning effort that requires shifts in business models, organizational structures, capabilities, and culture.

Digital Transformation
Industrial small tech firms face unique challenges in scaling, like high complexity and inertia. Firms should systematically evaluate different scaling strategies ahead of time, prioritizing customer and partner outcomes.

Digital Transformation
Technical debt is an accumulation of software maintenance obligations, originating from shortcuts and temporary solutions during development. Escaping technical debt requires a two-pronged approach – managers need to consider both the technical and social aspects of the problem.

Innovation
Grand challenges are highly complex, large-scale, and wicked problems with global implications. These challenges cannot be addressed by a single organization. Open Social Innovation (OSI) in spaces like fab labs can encourage the necessary level of multi-stakeholder cross-sectoral collaboration.

Board of Directors
As IT systems age, organizations replace them – yet many of those replacement projects fail to achieve expected outcomes. Boards of directors can prevent such failures by addressing a number of predictable blind spots.

Alliances & Mergers
Startup-corporate partnerships provide mutual benefits by combining startups’ innovation with established firms’ resources and processes. Differences in pace, cultural clashes, and misaligned expectations should be addressed through early attention to proactive problem-solving.



Growth Strategy
The streaming company has remained dominant through a focus on profit logic

Security & Privacy
The same AI capabilities that pose an increased data risk to firms can be adapted to enhance security

Sales
Voice AI is a complementary channel that can boost a firm's revenue without undermining its other platforms

California Management Review

Published at Berkeley Haas for more than sixty years, California Management Review seeks to share knowledge that challenges convention and shows a better way of doing business.

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