DI-GEST
DI-GEST – Shaping Digital Transformation
DI-GEST – Digitalisierung gestalten (Shaping Digital Transformation) is a joint research initiative of Hochschule Mainz – University of Applied Sciences and Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU). The central idea of the research college is to actively shape digital transformation rather than simply respond to technological change. The project focuses on understanding new digital technologies, assessing their opportunities and risks, and developing practical approaches for implementing digital transformation in organizations.
The research college was launched in 2020 and was supported through the Research Colleges of Rhineland-Palatinate funding program. The initiative was designed as a three-year collaboration between the two institutions and combined academic research with the qualification of early-career researchers through cooperative doctoral projects. In total, six doctoral researchers worked within three research tandems, bringing together researchers from the university and the university of applied sciences.
The research activities were organized into three main research areas:
1. Theories of Digital Transformation
The first research tandem investigated how organizations can identify and evaluate emerging technologies and digital trends that may be relevant to their future development. The researchers aimed to develop an integrative conceptual framework for understanding how organizations recognize new technologies and experiment with them in the context of new business models, open innovation, and new forms of value creation.
A central challenge is that technologies such as blockchain, artificial intelligence, or other emerging digital solutions can fundamentally change products, services, processes, and business models. Organizations therefore need systematic approaches to determine which technologies are strategically relevant and how they can be integrated into their business activities.
3. Application-Driven Transformation of User Processes
The third research area examined how digital media environments can transform customer communication and consumer behavior. A particular focus was placed on digital storytelling and the ways in which organizations can use new digital communication environments to influence and improve interactions with customers.
The research therefore connects digital technologies with the human side of digital transformation. Rather than looking only at technology itself, it considers how people respond to new digital communication formats and how these changes affect consumption and user behavior.
2. Technology-Driven Transformation of Decision-Making
The second research area focused on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in organizational decision-making. The objective was to identify standard business decision problems that could be significantly improved through AI-based methods.
The researchers also aimed to develop reference processes that organizations could use when introducing AI into their decision-making activities. The research therefore goes beyond the technical capabilities of AI and addresses the organizational question of how AI can be successfully implemented in real business processes.
This research area also resulted in doctoral research on topics such as AI use cases and explainable AI. For example, Marc de Zoeten completed his doctoral dissertation in 2024 on the effects of explainable AI on trust in AI-based systems, while Matthias Brunnbauer completed a dissertation on methods and models for identifying and evaluating AI use cases.
Why the Project Matters
DI-GEST addresses a fundamental challenge of modern organizations: digital transformation is not simply about introducing new technologies. It also requires changes in business models, decision-making processes, organizational structures, customer communication, and user behavior.
The project therefore combines different perspectives from business administration, management, information systems, innovation research, and digital media. This interdisciplinary approach allows the researchers to examine digital transformation at several levels — from identifying emerging technologies, to implementing AI in organizational processes, to understanding how digital technologies change interactions with customers and consumers.
An important feature of DI-GEST is the cooperation between a traditional university and a university of applied sciences. This combines the theoretical and methodological strengths of university research with the practical and application-oriented perspective of a university of applied sciences. Hochschule Mainz describes the research college as an important contribution to both research profiling and the cross-institutional qualification of young researchers.
Overall, DI-GEST can be understood as a research initiative that seeks to answer three interconnected questions: How can organizations recognize relevant technological developments? How can technologies such as AI be effectively integrated into organizational decision-making? And how do digital technologies change the way organizations communicate with and are experienced by their customers?
By addressing these questions, the project contributes to a better understanding of how organizations can use digital transformation strategically and responsibly. Its central message is that digitalization should not be viewed merely as a technological development, but as a comprehensive transformation of organizations, decision-making, innovation, communication, and society.