Ad­vanced Stra­tegic In­form­a­tion Man­age­ment

Course content

In today’s digital economy, information management has evolved into a strategic necessity for orchestrating radically complex and wide-reaching digital ecosystems. Hence, this course is not about how to program or manage databases for purposes of operational efficiency. Rather, we focus on alternative viewpoints on digital strategizing that are more appropriate for the challenges posed by an emerging digital world. To this effect, we focus on the notion of digital ecosystems by combining ecological and systemic thinking (e.g. resilience, system dynamics) with key concepts of digitalization (e.g. platforms, digital innovation) into a contemporary framework of strategic information management. As a result, students will learn new approaches to digital strategizing in the 21st century and how they, as digital ecologists, can orchestrate (digital) ecosystems in favour of sustainable growth and adaptive capacities rather than reckless blitzscaling.

This course is purposefully designed to address all nine core values of CBS, as it...

1. places digitalization in the broader context of contemporary socio-ecological developments;
2. conveys analytical skills of systemic thinking and causal feedback loops to engage with the rising complexity and ambiguity of (digital) ecosystems;
3. discusses socio-ecological challenges of digitalization and how to resolve them;
4. demystifies the delusion of maximizing profits through competition as the only purpose of business in order to understand the wider repercussions of digitalization for society and ecology;
5. forefronts ethical dilemmas of quick-fixing symptoms with digital technology vs. addressing underlying root problems;
6. engages students to be critical about digitalization and its runaway dynamics from an ecosystemic perspective;
7. challenges students to think long-term and holistic about the impact of digitalization and digital strategy;
8. offers the option for students to collaborate on weekly exercises and provide peer-feedback;
9. invites students to think systemically with regards to digital strategy and how its local implementation can have global consequences.

The use of GenAI tools is only permitted as a standard writing aid (e.g. spellchecking) and basic information retrieval tool (e.g. search engine).