Center for Digital Transformation
Managing Digital Transformation
Digitalization is transforming vast areas of our lives and new technologies are fundamentally changing the way companies work. From processes to business models and management styles – everything must be put to the test. The Center for Digital Transformation (CDT) researches issues related to digitalization, its challenges, and opportunities. Our goal is to develop solutions through practice-oriented research and thus generate direct benefits for the economy and society. New findings flow directly into teaching to prepare our students for the tasks of the future.
News
New publication in the journal “Journal of Financial Economics” by Prof. Sebastian Müller and Christian Breitung
The publication entitled "Global Business Networks" was conducted by Prof. Sebastian Müller and Christian Breitung. They leverage the capabilities of GPT-3 to generate historical business descriptions for over 63,000 global firms. Utilizing these descriptions and advanced embedding models from OpenAI, the researchers construct time-varying business networks that represent business links across the globe. They showcase the performance of these networks by studying the lead-lag effect for global stocks and predicting target firms in M&A deals. Sebastian Müller and Christian Breitung further demonstrate how masking firm-specific details can mitigate look-ahead bias concerns that may arise from the use of embedding models with a recent knowledge cutoff, and how to differentiate between competitor, supplier, and customer links by fine-tuning an open-source language model.
The publication can be accessed here.
Prof. Hanna Hottenrott presents at the CDT Seminar Series
On February 5, 2025, Prof. Hanna Hottenrott, Professor of Innovation Economics at the Technical University of Munich, visited our Center at the invitation of Prof. Sebastian Müller and Dr. Karoline Bax. Her presentation was entitled Judged by their cover? Visibility Bias in the Financing of Green Start-ups. Thank you for your visit and the great conversations and discussions with our CDT members!
News archive
Research
Prizes & Awards
Events
CDT Research Seminar
Media Coverage
Team
Research Topics
Data-driven Decision Making
How can companies and organizations make decisions based on actual data rather than intuition? We apply big data analytics, machine learning and optimization to support decision making in health care, finance, marketing, and supply chain management. We refine the methods for specific applications and develop new algorithms and methods which can deal with the uncertainty usually present in data.
Associated professorships
Digital Platforms
How can businesses benefit from digital platforms? We study digital business models where competition as well as other determinants are taken into account. We develop methods and incentive schemes that help a platform to gain traction among users, suppliers as well as consumers, and investigate the necessary steps that need to be taken to establish successful platforms in the market.
Associated professorships
Impact of Digital Technologies on Business
What impact do digital technologies have on business? We investigate the improvement of processes, business models and business ecosystems through the combination of various digital technologies in order to ensure the competitiveness of a company. We also explore the use of virtual reality and augmented reality in industry and investigate the impact of digitization on the financial markets.
Associated professorships
Teaching
Master or Bachelor Thesis at the CDT
Students who are interested in writing their Master or Bachelor Thesis at the Center for Digital Transformation (CDT). To be considered for the winter term, please submit your application no later than 15 February. For the summer term, the deadline is 15 September. Further information can be found here.
General information
The team of the CDT contributes to the study programs offered by the TUM School of Management at the TUM Campus Heilbronn. More information about the Bachelor in Management & Technology can be found here and about the Master in Management here.
Project Studies
A project carried out by a team of students of the Bachelor in Management & Technology (BMT) and the Master in Management (MIM) of the TUM Campus Heilbronn in collaboration with a company and a professorship of the TUM School of Management. Further information can be found here.
Interdisciplinary projects (IDPs)
IDPs are available for students of the Informatics study program and consist of theoretical (learning about management techniques) and practical (implementing informatics) skills. Further information can be found here.
CDT aims at creating a sustainable impact in the real world through its research. This approach inspired me to work on one of the most burning problems of businesses during the Covid-19 crisis and to contribute in solving real-life business problems.
Vivek ModiMaster in Management graduate, award winner for his master's thesis at the CDT
I enjoyed the DTOM workshop very much. The presentations were very interesting and covered a wide array of topics. It was a great opportunity to network with colleagues/friends and meet new people, including some very bright PhD students.
Prof. Dorothee HonhonProfessor of Operations Management, University of Texas at Dallas
During the 2022 DTOM Workshop, I learned more about the latest research developments and career planning from leading scholars in an interactive and inspiring way.
Simone BalversPhD Candidate, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management
I enjoyed the DDRM workshop very much. It allowed for in-depth and open discussions, provided plenty of time for informal interactions and for meeting new researchers, and created opportunities for future collaborations.
Jean PauphiletAssistant Professor at London Business School, participant of the CDT workshop on data-driven dynamic and robust resource management
The presentations by senior faculty and PhD students were truly thought-provoking and it was great catching up with collaborators. It was perhaps even more valuable to connect with so many new people who bring exciting new ideas to the area.
Prof. Willem van JaarsveldProfessor of Stochastic Optimization and Machine Learning, Eindhoven University of Technology, participant of the CDT workshop on Deep Reinforcement Learning
I presented my research project and received a lot of valuable feedback. I also discussed my working paper with two experienced researchers, which was a great exchange of ideas and I could learn from their detailed suggestions.
Yihua WangPhD student at TUM School of Management in Munich, participant of the CDT Workshop on Deep Reinforcement Learning
Want to know more about TUM School of Management? What drives us and what defines us can be found in our new brochure!
Prof. Gudrun KiesmüllerProfessor of Operatons Management
