Digital Transformation and Communications: How Key Trends Will Transform the Way Companies Communicate

The authors address in this chapter fundamental challenges with which, in the context of digital transformation, professional communication for companies and organizations must cope. Building on a clarification of the IoT, the Industrial Internet and other key concepts, they identify the role of corporate communications in the three industrial epochs that preceded today’s emergence of Industry 4.0. On this basis, they identify four trend “worlds” for the current digital transformation phase. They are technology, business, organization and society—each with three specific trends. Each of these 12 trends is investigated for its relevance for communication and communicators before, at the end of their chapter, the authors tackle the question of whether “communication as a profession” might disappear as a consequence of the digital transformation.