Digital Economy Dynamics
Strategy and Processes in Digital Banking
- 2026
- Book
- Authors
- David Vander
- Rahat Munir
- Stephen Brammer
- Publisher
- Springer Nature Singapore
About this book
This book examines how strategic thinking is evolving in response to the realities of the digital economy. Traditional strategy frameworks, built for slower, more stable environments, no longer capture the complexity of today’s business landscape, where innovation is constant, data is abundant, and competition is shaped by digital platforms and ecosystems.
Focusing on the global digital banking sector—one of the most digitally advanced industries—the book draws on original research, including interviews with 39 senior strategy leaders. It explores how organisations are navigating strategy in practice, highlighting shifts in decision-making, organisational logic, and the role of technology in shaping strategic options.
Rather than proposing that classical strategy be discarded, the book argues for its adaptation. It offers a grounded, research-based view of how organisations are integrating agility, experimentation, and digital infrastructure into their strategic processes. The goal is not to replace strategic theory, but to update it—reflecting the conditions of a digital-first economy.
This book bridges multiple disciplines, including strategic management, organisational theory, information systems, and innovation. While its case focus is on digital banking, the insights are relevant across sectors facing digital transformation.
Designed for scholars, practitioners, and educators, this book provides both empirical depth and conceptual clarity. It contributes to the growing conversation about what strategy means in an environment defined by speed, fluidity, and ongoing technological change.
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Table of Contents
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Frontmatter
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1. Understanding the Digital Economy
David Vander, Rahat Munir, Stephen BrammerThis chapter delves into the transformative impact of the digital economy on business strategy, highlighting the shift from traditional, linear approaches to dynamic, iterative, and experimentation-based methodologies. It explores how the digital economy's characteristics, such as low barriers to entry, rapid feedback, and high-speed execution, necessitate a new approach to strategy development and execution. The text emphasizes the role of start-ups and entrepreneurship in driving innovation and strategy, as well as the integration of software-driven methodologies like Agile and Lean Start-up into strategic planning. It also examines the importance of continuous innovation, the role of technology in strategy, and the need for inclusive, multilevel strategy practices. The chapter concludes with a framework for developing and executing strategy in the digital economy, offering insights into how organizations can adapt and thrive in this new landscape.AI Generated
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AbstractStrategy scholarship needs to evolve to maintain relevancy in the digital economy. Strategy development and execution have been indelibly impacted by the digital economy primarily due to low barriers to entry, low capital requirements and high-speed execution for new business ventures (von Briel et al., 2018). -
Chapter 2. Perspectives From the Literature on Digital Economy and Banking Transformation
David Vander, Rahat Munir, Stephen BrammerThis chapter delves into the evolving landscape of strategy practices and processes within the digital economy, with a particular emphasis on the banking sector. The review employs a structured methodology to assess the existing literature, identifying key themes and gaps in the current understanding. The chapter highlights the importance of integrating strategy, innovation, and information systems in the digital economy, noting that 67% of the relevant research has been produced since 2015. It also underscores the global and cross-industry applicability of the research, with a significant focus on start-ups and emerging firms. The chapter concludes by outlining a research agenda aimed at advancing the understanding of strategy practices and processes in the digital economy, emphasizing the need for more empirical research and the development of integrated frameworks. Readers will gain insights into the current state of research in this field, the challenges faced by digital banking transformation, and the potential directions for future research.AI Generated
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AbstractThe literature review will review the character and significance of research concerned with strategy practices and processes in the digital economy within the mainstream academic literature with a particular focus on the intersection of strategy, innovation and IS. -
3. Integrating Literature Insights: Building the Conceptual Framework
David Vander, Rahat Munir, Stephen BrammerThis chapter delves into the integration of literature insights to develop a conceptual framework for strategy practices and processes in the digital economy. It identifies major research areas and outlines the evolution of strategy practices and processes, consistent with this organising framework. The chapter also formulates research implications designed to address and test the validity of the organising framework and the conceptual development. Key topics include the conceptual themes in current research, the organising framework of strategy practices and processes, and the impact of digitalisation on strategy. The chapter concludes with a thorough analysis of the gaps in current research and the need for further exploration in this area. By examining the current state of research and identifying key trends and patterns, this chapter provides valuable insights into the future of strategy practices and processes in the digital economy.AI Generated
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AbstractConsistent with the research insights developed in the literature review in Chap. 2, this chapter develops an organising framework and critical analysis of the current research identifying trends, insights, patterns and, most importantly, gaps in the research agenda to advance the literature on strategy practices and processes in the digital economy. -
4. Research Design, Strategy and Implementation
David Vander, Rahat Munir, Stephen BrammerThis chapter delves into the methodology behind researching strategy practices in the digital economy, with a particular focus on digital banking. It outlines the research design, strategy, and implementation, highlighting the use of qualitative analysis and the Gioia methodology. The chapter explores how strategy is developed and executed in the digital economy, emphasizing the dynamic and technologically intensive nature of digital transformation and disruption. It also discusses the choice of digital banking as a 'pure' digital firm scenario and the analytical framework developed to guide the research. The findings reveal that strategy practices in the digital economy are becoming more dynamic, entrepreneurial, and experimentation-based, with a strong emphasis on continuous strategy and execution. The chapter concludes by highlighting the role of investors, technology, and innovation in shaping strategy practices in the digital economy.AI Generated
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AbstractThis chapter will articulate and justify the methodology used for the research in this book based on the outcomes of the literature review and the conceptual themes as outlined in the previous two chapters. -
5. Dynamic Digital Strategy
David Vander, Rahat Munir, Stephen BrammerThis chapter delves into the transformative impact of the digital economy on strategy practices and processes, emphasizing the shift towards dynamic, entrepreneurial, and experimentation-based approaches. It explores the distinctive needs for strategy-making in digital banks, the role of various elements in promoting competitive advantage, and the unique ways digital banks perform strategy-making. The research proposes an inductive model of dynamic digital strategy, highlighting four main dimensions: organizational design influences, strategy practice and process antecedents, investor influence on strategy, and dynamic digital strategy. The findings reveal that strategy practices and processes in the digital economy are more iterative, high-speed, and experimentation-based, relying on real-time, data-driven feedback. The chapter also underscores the importance of organizational design, strategy tooling, and the role of investors in shaping strategy. It concludes by emphasizing the need for strategy scholarship to evolve to incorporate these dynamic and high-speed elements, providing a comprehensive overview of the evolving landscape of strategy in the digital age.AI Generated
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AbstractAs the first of three empirical chapters, the findings in this chapter highlight the ‘what’ that is occurring in strategy practices and processes in the digital economy. Strategy development and execution are becoming more dynamic, entrepreneurial and experimentation-based, with some elements of traditional business strategy remaining durable. This chapter explores the strategy methods used in the digital economy versus more generalised or traditional forms of strategy or strategy practices and processes. It is not an exposé of all that is required and is well understood in strategy and explores the delta or variance needed to advance strategy practices and processes scholarship based on the digital economy. -
6. Software-Driven Strategy
David Vander, Rahat Munir, Stephen BrammerThis chapter explores the 'how' of strategy in the digital economy, focusing on how software development tools and methodologies have become de facto strategic practices and processes. It highlights the role of agile methodology and lean startup approach in strategy methods, with a particular emphasis on the technology teams' role in strategy development and execution. The chapter also discusses the impact of architectural decisions on effective strategy and the importance of technology strategy becoming synonymous with business strategy. Additionally, it delves into the role of experimentation in strategy and the need for new skills and capabilities to capitalize on this new strategy methodology paradigm. The chapter concludes by proposing a model for software-defined strategy, which presents strategy and its development utilizing a far more technology-led approach.AI Generated
This summary of the content was generated with the help of AI.
AbstractThis chapter is the second of three empirical chapters. It outlines the ‘how’ of strategy in that software development tools and methodologies have largely become de facto strategic practices and processes. -
7. Continuous Innovation and Strategy
David Vander, Rahat Munir, Stephen BrammerThis chapter delves into the dynamic relationship between continuous innovation and strategy in the digital economy, emphasizing how these two elements integrate to form a comprehensive organizational capability. It explores the critical role of customers, ecosystems, and experimentation in driving effective innovation and strategy. The chapter also discusses the impact of digital innovation on strategic planning and execution, highlighting the need for organizations to adapt to rapid changes and continuous evolution. Additionally, it examines the role of vision in lieu of traditional strategy practices and the importance of experimentation and entrepreneurship in the digital economy. The chapter concludes by emphasizing the need for organizations to develop sophisticated organizational capabilities to capitalize on the opportunities presented by continuous innovation and strategy.AI Generated
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AbstractThis chapter is the third and final of three empirical chapters. It outlines ‘where’ strategy methods in the digital economy are occurring, particularly the nested and generative nexus of strategy and innovation. The chapter details how in the digital economy, strategy and innovation coalesce into a much more comprehensive, integrated and accelerated capability across the entire organisation and involve all actors. -
8. Synthesis, Implications and Conclusions
David Vander, Rahat Munir, Stephen BrammerThis chapter revisits and summarizes the findings from empirical research on strategy practices and processes in the digital economy, with a focus on digital banking. It explores the contributions and extensions to theory, the limitations of the research, and future research opportunities. The chapter aims to summarize the main findings, juxtapose these findings with the literature review and conceptual development, extend existing theories, outline the impact of these findings to scholars and practitioners, discuss the limitations of the research, and develop opportunities for promising future research. Key topics include the impact of digital innovation life cycles on strategy practices and processes, the distinctive needs for the strategy-making process in digital banks, the role of technology in strategy practices and processes and strategic execution, and the extent to which innovation has become experimentation or iterative development. The chapter concludes that traditional strategy methods are not utilized in the digital economy, and that a more dynamic experimentation-based strategy practices dominate, with technology divisions playing a larger role in strategy practices and processes. Continuous innovation needs to play a more comprehensive, integrated, and accelerated capability across the entire organization, incorporating dynamically and comprehensively into the strategy process.AI Generated
This summary of the content was generated with the help of AI.
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Backmatter
- Title
- Digital Economy Dynamics
- Authors
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David Vander
Rahat Munir
Stephen Brammer
- Copyright Year
- 2026
- Publisher
- Springer Nature Singapore
- Electronic ISBN
- 978-981-9573-97-4
- Print ISBN
- 978-981-9573-96-7
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-95-7397-4
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