THE DIGITAL ECONOMY CHALLENGES AS THE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION TRIGGERS: EVOLUTIONARY SCALE AND THE CAUSE-AND-EFFECT RELATIONSHIPS
Authors:   Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia, Lapidus L. V. 
Published: August 2023

The digital economy challenges were formed at each stage of the digital economy development, which, on the one hand, opened up the new opportunities for economic entities, at the same time, they carried threats and risks for their sustainable development. The companies were forced to launch a digital transformation as a response to the ongoing changes in the complex, dynamic environment of the digital economy. According to IDC, companies’ global spending on digital transformation is growing by an average of 16–18% per year. By the end of 2017, their volume exceeded $1.3 trillion, and by 2021 it was supposed to increase to $2.1 trillion. According to analysts, digital transformation in the automotive industry alone can reach $700 million by 2025. The purpose of the study is to identify and substantiate the causal relationships between the processes characterizing the formation of digital economy challenges and the digital transformation processes on the evolutionary scale of the digital economy. The approaches used and the methodological apparatus of the research are based on the author’s own development – the matrix approach (the matrix “Evolution of the digital economy and systemic digital transformation”). The author also relied on a systematic approach, a retrospective analysis, a study of the conceptual foundations of the digital economy and digital transformation outlined in the scientific works of scientists, experts and on his own business consulting practice of Russian and foreign company managers on the field of development strategies in a turbulent environment, digital transformation strategies, new business models and KPIs. Of interest is the author’s approach to the consideration of digital transformation as a process, phenomenon and result with the disclosure of the interrelationships between transformational processes in response to the challenges continuously emerging in the digital economy. The information base was compiled by reports of consulting company Gartner, statistical data of GSMA Intelligence, IDC. Key results. Digital transformation has become an integral part of the corporate strategic development in all spheres and areas of activity in response to the challenges accompanying the digital economy evolution. A feature of the process of formalizing the digital economy challenges has become the uniqueness of the phenomena and events that have no analogues in the past, which required managers to acquire new knowledge necessary for making managerial decisions. First of all, in understanding the nature and essence of the digital economy, the determinants of the digital environment turbulence, the state of which has changed throughout all stages of the digital economy development. The new challenges were fixed at each stage of the digital economy evolutionary development, which generated significant transformations and were characterized by the emergence of new business models, the launch of processes to increase data liquidity, the monetization of algorithms, the construction of digital infrastructure, and many others. The challenges of the digital economy have become the most noticeable by 2018, when the features of a new technological shift that poses a threat to all socio-economic systems have taken shape. In the period 2020-2030, the digital economy entered the most difficult stage of systemic digital transformation due to the imposition of numerous digital economy challenges, manifested at all previous stages since 1990. The scientific novelty lies in the author’s approach to the study of the digital economy challenges and a systematic view of their formation through the prism of the launch and consequences of digital transformation at each stage of the digital economy evolutionary scale. The practical significance is due to the possibility of applying the obtained research results in the practice of strategic management of modern companies from the perspective of a systematic approach to digital transformation. Further research is aimed at conducting a comparative analysis of the impact of the digital economy challenges on the corporate digital transformation, taking into account industry specifics.