Digital Openness und Digital Readiness

The publication WIFU_kompakt_17: Digital Openness and Digital Readiness (2021) from the WIFU Foundation analyses the role of the entrepreneurial family as a central influencing factor of digital transformation in family businesses. The starting point is the thesis that digital changes fail less due to technological questions than due to the attitudes, competencies, and decision-making logic of the owner family. Digital openness is thus highlighted as a cultural and value-based prerequisite for successful transformation processes.

The focus is on the distinction between digital openness – understood as open-mindedness, curiosity, and a willingness to experiment – and digital readiness, meaning the concrete ability to initiate, manage, and control digital projects from a professional standpoint. It is shown that generational differences within the family business can lead to tensions, but at the same time can also open up potential for a productive division of roles between the senior generation and the next generation. The publication emphasises the importance of intergenerational dialogue and the conscious involvement of the next generation in digital decision-making processes.

Furthermore, the WIFU integrates digital transformation into its typology of mental models of entrepreneurial families and derives four typical situations of digital readiness from this. For each of these constellations, practical governance and organisational solutions are described, such as the integration of external digital expertise, the development of family-internal competencies, or the establishment of advisory boards. The aim is not digitalisation for its own sake, but the long-term future viability of the family business in the interplay of family, ownership, and management.