Purpose: Digital Transformation of Individuals, Organizations and Societies

This book intends to reveal the latent purpose required to champion, lead, and enact digital transformation. It articulates that a purposeful approach, as followed in this book, is urgently required and may help the world’s population harness the power of technology. The book is based on over twenty years of the author’s research, thinking, discussions, publications, and observations about how technology influences us. He also builds upon his understanding of sciences-physics, chemistry, neuroscience, and others-to bring out the notion of purpose-the purpose of digital transformation. The book is a scientific endeavor to define and address the paradox surrounding digital technologies, framing it as a problem underlined due to unclarity in purpose. The lack of understanding of purpose may hurt individuals, organizations, and societies. The book, therefore, identifies purpose as a way to lead digital transformations. In doing so, it outlines complex and interwoven linkages between life, organization, and digital technologies. Thinking about digital technologies as an element devoid of links with life is dangerous. We are intertwined with technology today. So, to digitally transform, the books espouses a new way to look at ourselves and life, using the neuroscientific lens. Unraveling the linkages between the organization, life, and digital technologies, the book outlines a model for purposeful digital transformation.

Pankaj Setia consults and conducts executive education programs with leading organizations and government institutions. His opinions on various aspects of digital transformation and leadership have appeared in leading outlets, such as the Business World, Outlook, and Forbes India, amongst others. He is often quoted by leading national dailies, such as Economic Times, Indian Express, and many others. He teaches graduate-level courses on the leadership of digital organizations, strategic management of digital innovations, and digital transformation at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA). He has previously taught for many years at Michigan State University and the University of Arkansas in the US.
His research has been published in the top information systems and business journal such as MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, and Journal of Operations Management, amongst many others. Over the last ten years, based on his publications in the top two leading IS journals (on the Financial Times top 50 journal list), he has featured among the top 100 researchers in the field of Information Systems world wide. His research has been presented at conferences across the world.
He has been invited to give research talks or keynote speeches by universities from different countries, such as India, the US, Chile, and Singapore. He is serving or has served as the chair of the Information Technology track at the Decision Sciences Institute Governance, Digital Strategy and Value track at the International Conference on Information Systems, guess associate editor at MIS Quarterly, Associate editor at the Journal of the Association for Information Systems, the editorial board of the Decision Sciences Journal, amongst other such service assignments.