The Expansion of the Digital World <br/> Digital Transformation and the Metaverse
The Expansion of the Digital World: Digital Transformation and the Metaverse
Hello, this is Chris & Partners.😊 Since the COVID-19 situation made contactless a daily norm, digital transformation has settled in as an indispensable element across diverse industries and continues to rise as a technology influential companies focus on! Today, let's explore what impact digital transformation has had on our lives and what relationship it has with the metaverse. 💡
The history of Digital Transformation
Digital transformation is a concept that first appeared in the 1990s, called the internet-revolution era, meaning the innovation of traditional social structures by applying digital technology across society. Unlike simple technological innovation applied to a limited field, digital transformation has the feature of occurring broadly across corporate management and changing business models. Starting with the ‘building of digital infrastructure’ stage in the late 1990s, as the internet was introduced in earnest, digital products like MP3 and VOD services emerged, and digital infrastructure like servers and networks was built. The change in the early 2000s centered on energizing the e-commerce market based on the built infrastructure. As internet penetration spread, the foundation of e-commerce grew explosively, and accordingly companies actively pursued digital marketing to gain competitiveness in the online market. Digital transformation reached its peak in the early 2010s with the emergence of cutting-edge ICT platforms—IoT, cloud computing, AI, big-data solutions, and blockchain. Companies began building new industry ecosystems through ‘computerization’ and ‘digitalization.’ It's a total ‘digital transformation’ of management strategy and business models. This trend is accelerating further, in tandem with the recent surge in demand for untact technology due to COVID-19.
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What opportunities will digital transformation bring?
1) Baemin's serving robot
Woowa Brothers launched the serving robot ‘Dilly.’ It can serve four tables at once, has a maximum load of 50 kg, and is offered on a rental basis. As word spread that store efficiency rose and customer satisfaction was high, adoption is spreading. Since its 2019 launch, over 400 robots have been operating in some 300 stores, mainly in the metro area. (As of 2021, it announced a goal of supplying about 600 serving robots to 450 stores.) Woowa Brothers' robotics-business director Kim Yo-seop said, ‘The goal of the serving robot is to raise store-operation efficiency across the dining industry, creating an environment where owners and staff can focus on improving customer-service quality,’ adding that, as the dining industry's demand for serving robots is increasing rapidly, they'll keep developing new models and programs that bring real help to stores and owners.
2) Gentle Monster's AR filter
The global fashion-eyewear brand Gentle Monster ran a project using an AR filter. When buying eyewear, trying it on to buy the right product was the usual process, but COVID-19 reduced Gentle Monster consumers who mainly visited offline stores, so it used an AR filter as a solution. By rendering four actual products into the Snow filter phone app, it induced use by potential consumers as well as existing Gentle Monster customers. This case shows experiential marketing through an AR filter. We can feel that such business-model changes are also closely linked to lifestyle changes in our daily lives. Beyond the examples above, the digital-transformation cases of giant companies representing each industry—Nike, Xiaomi, Starbucks, Tesla—show a blueprint of technology to be further developed in the future.
The metaverse and digital transformation
The metaverse, which expands realistic domains in the digital world, is also not unrelated to digital transformation. The metaverse's core is the expansion of the digital world. Based on tech infrastructure set to develop further, what the metaverse will bring is a future where things become replaceable by a digital environment rather than the real world—a metaverse arena with a broadened frame of activities and functions that couldn't be done in past virtual worlds. The reason the metaverse is drawing attention now is also that, using the metaverse, companies, schools, institutions, and governments can perform quite excellently in the virtual world the economic activities, performances, and social gatherings once considered the exclusive domain of reality. For example, a virtual-real-estate investment craze is blowing in the metaverse world, and users wanting to own digital real estate—buildings and land in a 3D virtual world or a mirror world identical to reality—are increasing. As the metaverse, blockchain, and NFTs (non-fungible tokens) rose, diverse virtual-world platforms and ecosystems combining them were born. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is called digital transformation, and the metaverse revolution can be seen as part of it—but the metaverse is growing to occupy most of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
C&P digital-transformation cases
1. Metacon 2021
Hosted by TV CHOSUN, Metacon 2021 created a forum of opportunity offering metaverse-industry trends and pioneers' insights in step with an untact era set to develop in many directions, under the theme of the ‘Metaverse’—free of time and space—as creative responses unfolded across every aspect of our lives in the new-normal era triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Chris & Partners successfully handled everything—from booking speakers from global companies leading the ‘metaverse’ industry, a core keyword theme of digital transformation, to program planning and venue operation.
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2. 2021 4th African Martial Arts Conference
The 4th African Martial Arts Conference was operated by Chris & Partners in 2021 too, following the 3rd last year. In 2021 it was held under the theme ‘The Potential Role of the International Centre of Martial Arts for Africa,’ organized by the UNESCO International Centre of Martial Arts and sponsored by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the Korea Sports Promotion Foundation, Chungcheongbuk-do, and Chungju City. As in the previous year, in 2021 it ran in a hybrid format connecting on-site and online. Given the fragile network typical of the African region, we ran multiple technical rehearsals in advance and prepared a plan for speakers losing their connection on the day, so we could respond flexibly even when a speaker's connection actually dropped. Chris & Partners, building on extensive experience, successfully handled the online conference operation, venue construction, and speaker management.
Curious what kind of event the African Martial Arts Conference is? 👉Go see the 2021 4th African Martial Arts Conference in detail, CLICK👈
Today, we saw the impact digital transformation has brought to everyday life and many companies, and its cooperation with the metaverse. Seeing such cases, we can expect digital transformation to bring even more change in the future. Looking forward to digital transformation continuing to make major progress in many fields, why not cultivate an eye for seeing the digital age that has come right up to us? 👀
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