Digital technology is fundamentally changing the competitive landscape. Our everyday life is shaped by technology. Amazon tells us what book to read; Netflix tells us what movie to watch; Spotify tells us what music to listen to; Blue Apron tells us what food to eat; Facebook tells us which friend we should talk to; Twitter tells us what news we should read; and Uber tells us which car we should ride. We are surrounded by products that are connected to the internet: smart phones, smart cars, smart TVs, smart refrigerators, smart light bulbs, etc.

Ironically, innovation is never about just inventing new technology. In fact, we can think about so many clever and creative innovations that are long forgotten. Innovation is making technology meaningful and valuable to us. Therefore, innovation requires us to truly understand us (people), what we do, why we do what we do, what makes us happy, and what we consider meaningful and valuable. In other words, innovation is a deeply humanistic exploration to make technology meaningful and valuable to us. While all innovation is challenging, digital innovation is particularly challenging due to its unique characteristics. It affords new capabilities to familiar things, potentially changing their meaning and value in our lives. In order to fully harness the transformative capacity of digital technology, we must gain deeper insights on people and their actions, meanings and values. Only when we are equipped with such deeper humanistic cultural understanding of people and their actions, are we able to create meaningful digital innovations that have enduring values in the society. This course will provide a set of tools and frameworks that organizations can use to transform their products and services using digital technology.