In the digital world, words and pictures are represented in binary code, which is made up of combinations of the numbers 0 and 1, commonly known as bits. Huge volumes of data may be compressed using digital technology and stored on tiny storage devices that can be readily protected and transferred. Data transmission speeds are also increased as a result of digitization.

The digital revolution transforms business models and presents new privacy issues and ethical dilemmas. Research by MIT Sloan CISR reports that U.S. listed companies that have a digitally savvy board show substantially better financial performance. What is a digitally savvy board? What are the differences between the old and the new world? What are the new ethical dilemmas and how do you prevent making the same mistakes as big tech? Why does innovation fail so often within the existing structures of established companies? Why does the three lines of defense model for risk management have an inhibitory effect on innovation in practice? The author discusses these questions and provides suggestions for improvement of corporate governance of established companies. In the next chapter, the author provides rules of the road for how established companies can monetize their data including some pitfalls for established companies and discusses a number of ethical dilemmas that companies encounter in practice when implementing new digital technologies and services.

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Friend and foe agree that our society is undergoing a digital revolution that will lead to a transformation of our society as we know it (Moerel, 2014, p. 4). In addition to all economic and social progress and prosperity, every technological revolution also brings along disruption and friction (Brynjolfsson & McAfee, 2014). It is now clear that new digital technologies (and, in particular, artificial intelligence, AI) enable many new services that can substantially disrupt existing business models. These new business models, in turn present new privacy issues and ethical dilemmas (Moerel & Prins, 2016, pp. 9-13) (van den Hoven, Miller, & Pegge, 2017, p. 5), and social resistance to the excesses of the new data economy is becoming increasingly visible and urgent. It is a challenge for established companies, to say the least, to both drastically innovate in order to remain future-proof and, at the same time, take social responsibility.