WHY IT MATTERS: Digital Transformation

The Oculus Rift is a virtual reality headset that is most definitely the future of gaming.

The device straps onto your head and completely immerses you inside a video game. It also has motion sensors so you can look around as if you were really inside the world. 

But it's nearly impossible to explain. The Oculus Rift is one of those things you have to see to believe. Several Business Insider employees gave it a whirl last week, and we took them on a trip through the solar system, on a medieval roller coaster, and put them into a death-by-guillotine simulation.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/oculus-rift-video-demo-2013-7#ixzz2Z1z0wfjF

This presentation provides an overview of 16 examples and use cases that lay out the different ways companies have approached the issue and found value: everything from pricing flexibility to customer preference management to credit risk analysis to fraud protection and discount targeting.

Speciality retailers are ramping up digital technology investments to combat Amazon's increasing market share.

A lot of people are freaked out by the idea that the NSA has for years been collecting data from ordinary Americans' email accounts. Nobody likes the idea of the feds combing through their email.

But experts know that it's not the content of individual emails that is the most useful thing to authorities. Rather, it's the metadata.

Metadata is, literally, "information about the information." Email metadata provides a much broader view of patterns between users, and who is communicating with who, than the text inside any individual email would.

If you want to identify terrorist networks, the metadata is what you really want, not access to the inside of a few suspects' accounts. (Although that might come later, of course.)

MIT has been working on a project called "Immersion" to let you do exactly that with your own email, so that you can see who your closest "collaborators" actually are (and not the ones you'd like to think they are). You sign up at this web site, and let the software arrange your email history into a visual network of the people you communicate with.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/this-mit-project-lets-you-spy-on-your-own-email-metadata-just-like-the-nsa-2013-7#ixzz2YHnDXHZY

Even now e-commerce is a rounding error in the U.S. market. 

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Still, he concedes the online problem is challenging. He recounts a conversation at a director’s meeting held at the e-commerce headquarters in San Bruno in March, when he was asked how long it would take and much it would cost to build out the e-commerce operation.

“It will take the rest of our careers and as much as we’ve got,” Mr. Ashe says he replied.

This infographic produced by Shop.org outlines the concepts discussed in the Shop.org Think Tank article “Same-Day Delivery: Should It be a Priority for Your Business?”

Board members should raise nine critical questions when discussing technology strategy with IT and business managers. A McKinsey & Company article.