Digital transformation is reshaping the business arena as new, successful digital business models are increasing agility and presenting better ways to handle business than the traditional alternatives. Industry 4.0 affects everything in our daily lives and is blurring the line between the physical, the biological, and the digital. This created an environment where technology and humans are so closely integrated that it is impacting every activity within the organizations. Specifically, contracting processes and procedures are challenged to align with the new business dynamics as traditional contracts are no longer fitting today's agile and continuously changing environments. Businesses are required to facilitate faster, more secure, soft, and real-time transactions while protecting stakeholders’ rights and obligations. This includes agile contracts which are dynamically handling scope changes, smart contracts that can automate rule-based functions, friction-less contracts that can facilitate different activities, and opportunity contracts that looks toward the future. Innovative and Agile Contracting for Digital Transformation and Industry 4.0 analyzes the consequences, benefits, and possible scenarios of contract transformation under the pressure of new technologies and business dynamics in modern times. The chapters cover the problems, issues, complications, strategies, governance, and risks related to the development and enforcement of digital transformation contracting practices. While highlighting topics in the area of digital transformation and contracting such as artificial intelligence, digital business, emerging technologies, and blockchain, this book is ideally intended for business, engineering, and technology practitioners and policy makers, along with practitioners, stakeholders, researchers, academicians, and students interested in understanding the scope, complexity, and importance of innovative contracts and agile contracting.

This volume constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 28th European Conference on Systems, Software and Services Process Improvement, EuroSPI 2021, held in Krems, Austria, in September 2021*. The 42 full papers and 9 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 100 submissions. The volume presents core research contributions and selected industrial contributions. Core research contributions: SPI and emerging software and systems engineering paradigms; SPI and team skills and diversity; SPI and recent innovations; SPI and agile; SPI and standards and safety and security norms; SPI and good/bad SPI practices in improvement; SPI and functional safety and cybersecurity; digitalisation of industry, infrastructure and e-mobility. Selected industrial contributions: SPI and emerging software and systems engineering paradigms; SPI and recent innovations; SPI and agile; SPI and standards and safety and security norms; SPI and good/bad SPI practices in improvement; SPI and functional safety and cybersecurity; digitalisation of industry, infrastructure and e-mobility; virtual reality. *The conference was partially held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

When the COVID-19 pandemic caused a halt in global society, many business leaders found themselves unprepared for the unprecedented change that swept across industry. Whether the need to shift to remote work or the inability to safely conduct business during a global pandemic, many businesses struggled in the transition to the “new normal.” In the wake of the pandemic, these struggles have created opportunities to study how businesses navigate these times of crisis. The Research Anthology on Business Continuity and Navigating Times of Crisis discusses the strategies, cases, and research surrounding business continuity throughout crises such as pandemics. This book analyzes business operations and the state of the economy during times of crisis and the leadership involved in recovery. Covering topics such as crisis management, entrepreneurship, and business sustainability, this four-volume comprehensive major reference work is a valuable resource for managers, CEOs, business leaders, entrepreneurs, professors and students of higher education, researchers, and academicians.

Building the Agile Business through Digital Transformation is an in-depth look at transforming businesses so they are fit for purpose in a digitally enabled world. It is a guide for all those needing to better understand, implement and lead digital transformation in the workplace. It sets aside traditional thinking and outdated strategies to explain what steps need to be taken for an organization to become truly agile. It addresses how to build organizational velocity and establish iterative working, remove unnecessary process, embed innovation, map strategy to motivation and develop talent to succeed. Building the Agile Business through Digital Transformation provides guidance on how to set the pace and frequency for change and shows how to break old habits and reform the behaviours of a workforce to embed digital transformation, achieve organizational agility and ensure high performance. Full of practical advice, examples and real-life insights from organizational development professionals at the leading edge of digital transformation, this book is an essential guide to building an agile business.

Digital transformation (DT) has become a buzzword. Every industry segment across the globe is consciously jumping toward digital innovation and disruption to get ahead of their competitors. In other words, every aspect of running a business is being digitally empowered to reap all the benefits of the digital paradigm. All kinds of digitally enabled businesses across the globe are intrinsically capable of achieving bigger and better things for their constituents. Their consumers, clients, and customers will realize immense benefits with real digital transformation initiatives and implementations. The much-awaited business transformation can be easily and elegantly accomplished with a workable and winnable digital transformation strategy, plan, and execution. There are several enablers and accelerators for realizing the much-discussed digital transformation. There are a lot of digitization and digitalization technologies available to streamline and speed up the process of the required transformation. Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) technologies in close association with decisive advancements in the artificial intelligence (AI) space can bring forth the desired transitions. The other prominent and dominant technologies toward forming digital organizations include cloud IT, edge/fog computing, real-time data analytics platforms, blockchain technology, digital twin paradigm, virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) techniques, enterprise mobility, and 5G communication. These technological innovations are intrinsically competent and versatile enough to fulfill the varying requirements for establishing and sustaining digital enterprises. Enterprise Digital Transformation: Technology, Tools, and Use Cases features chapters on the evolving aspects of digital transformation and intelligence. It covers the unique competencies of digitally transformed enterprises, IIoT use cases, and applications. It explains promising technological solutions widely associated with digital innovation and disruption. The book focuses on setting up and sustaining smart factories that are fulfilling the Industry 4.0 vision that is realized through the IIoT and allied technologies.

Building Intelligent Enterprises by leveraging the emerging and next-generation technologies to accelerate the adoption of digital transformation The speed of innovation and emerging IT technologies are changing at a very fast pace and enterprises are eager to join the digital revolution so they can stand above the competition and succeed as the enterprise of tomorrow. This book is an attempt to make the enterprise intelligent by providing the path to digital transformation and the adoption of new IT methods, tools and technologies. This book has been organized to cover the following topics: Digital Transformation, Design Thinking, Agile, DevOps, Robotic Process Automation, Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Blockchain, Drones, Augmented and Virtual Reality, 3D Printing, Big Data, Analytics, Cloud Computing, APIs, and SAP Leonardo. No prior knowledge of any technical coding or language is necessary to understand the content of this book. End-to-end storyline to accelerate the enterprise’s digital transformation journey How an enterprise can stay relevant, compete, and perform in the digital economy How to leverage these technologies to build intelligent enterprises Understand and apply the emerging technologies across key business processes Industry-specific Use Cases for all technologies as a reference point to build the business case for implementation The book is very well suited towards the C-Suite executives, both IT and business leaders, directors and managers, project managers, solution architects, and all professionals who have an interest and desire to keep up-to-date with the latest technological trends, looking for a career change, want to help enterprise adapt and onboard the digital roadmap, or have an agenda to digitize key processes within the enterprise to make it intelligent.

Digital Transformation Management for Agile Organizations highlights and explores new dynamics regarding how current digital developments globally scale, by examining the threats, as well as the opportunities these innovations offer to organizations of all kinds.