The global economic landscape has been (and will likely continue to be) profoundly affected by the swift growth and ever-increasing sophistication of computing technology. Interestingly, many of the biggest winners of the digital revolution are companies with a traditional industry background. There are several possible explanations for this trend. For starters, the scale of the digital revolution has made it near impossible for static legacy corporations to continue ignoring historic growth dynamics and contemporary innovation opportunities. 

As outdated companies undergo a long overdue shakeup, business leaders around the world have become more and more enthusiastic about incorporating digital technologies into their core business models. In this article, we'll dive deeper into the radical effect that digital technologies are having on traditional industries, whether it's the surging user base for remote education platforms or the snowballing development and adoption of online will kits.

Breaking Down the Digital Technology Revolution

The digital technology revolution has its origins in the invention of the first working transistor in 1947. In the years following this ground-breaking discovery, the traditional structures of the global financial system have undergone the largest economic transformation in human history. Broadly speaking, this transformation has been driven by a massive multi-sector shift to abandon mechanical and analogue technology in favor of digital computing and communications technology. As computing technology has become more and more ubiquitous, the global economy has experienced sweeping changes in capital flows, labor participation, industrial output, sector specialization, and information proliferation.  

Five Traditional Industries That Have Been Reinvented by Technology 

To give you some idea of the expansive scale of digital innovation across the global economy, we have listed five so-called traditional industries that have been completely reinvented by the digital technology revolution. 

1. Retail Shopping

When it comes to technology-driven industry-wide reinvention, the transformation of the retail shopping sector is probably one of the first examples that comes to mind. The revolution in the retail shopping industry began with the development of e-commerce technologies, a trend that pushed traditional brick and mortar shopping malls into competition with tech-savvy juggernauts like Amazon. 

As we all know, Amazon emerged as the clear winner of the competition for retail shopping market dominance. Nevertheless, by the time the dust settled, a sizeable segment of the bruised and battered retail industry had recognized the commercial value of owning and operating a dedicated online presence. This realization led to the establishment of several new e-commerce marketplaces and hundreds of online brand-specific retail distribution channels. 

2. The Funeral and Will Industry

Even the funeral business, an industry built around a reverence for tradition, has not been immune to technological reinvention, especially over the past few months. When coronavirus (COVID-19) restrictions began prohibiting large gatherings, many funeral homes took to using video conferencing platforms to host online mourning services. While obviously far from ideal, funeral homes hoped that these tasteful webcasts could provide the bereaved with some measure of comfort and support.  

Perhaps the most striking reinvention in the funeral and will business is the increasing popularity of online will kits. In many ways, online will kits deliver a similar service to that offered by the online tax return industry. The main advantage of an online will kit is that it strips down the legal jargon, offering customers a streamlined Q&A approach to planning and signing an official will document. At any point during the process, if you have a question or run into a technical problem, you can easily get in touch with an online will kit customer service specialist via pop-up chat or email contact form. 

3. Financial Services

The modern financial services industry is almost unrecognizable from what it looked like prior to the digital technology revolution. This transformation is almost entirely due to the advent of the computer, a machine that revolutionized the management of money and financialization of assets. As computers have become more advanced, traditional financial services, such as portfolio management and in-person brokerage, have fallen by the wayside, increasingly replaced by algorithm-obsessed quants and byzantine derivative traders. 

4. Education 

After decades spent clinging to conventional teaching methods, traditional education institutions have been forced to employ digital technology to safely traverse the unprecedented challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. For instance, to avoid large-scale congregations of students, both schools and universities have turned to remote learning platforms like Zoom and Blackboard to host lectures and teach tutorials. Despite the upheaval, education institutions have proven to be remarkably adept at adapting to the digital revolution, rapidly reinventing teaching methods and seamlessly restructuring classroom requirements.

5. The Medical Industry

Like the financial services industry, the medical industry is rife with targeted technological advancement, from the creation of the humble yet vital electronic health records database to the developing field of pharmacogenomics and personalized medicine. Time and time again, technological innovations in the medical industry have propelled major reinventions in the traditional approaches to primary, secondary, tertiary, and quaternary care.