The Second Wave of Business Digitization
On September 28, 2026, the Geneva Chamber of Commerce, Industry, and Services (CCIG) will host a breakfast event focused on the second wave of business digitization, the topic of the latest book published by the Manufacture Thinking think tank. This event will explore a new phase of digital transformation: following computerization and process automation, how can organizations leverage information that has largely gone unnoticed within their ranks to generate new insights, improve decision-making, and potentially develop new business models?
From Dark Data to Emerging Data: Unlocking the Hidden Value in Enterprise Data
ERP, CRM, document management, or workflows: the first wave of digitization primarily enabled companies to structure and automate processes they already had under control. The “second wave of digitization” proposes shifting the focus to what remains largely untapped: dark data—comprising emails, meeting minutes, notes, historical records, logs, and information scattered across various silos.
The challenge, then, is to reveal the relationships between these data points using approaches such as dynamic ontology, in order to bring to light connections and structures of meaning that were previously invisible. By linking these data points, new information—referred to as “emergent data”—may emerge, which can inform new insights and decisions within the company.
For small and medium-sized enterprises in French-speaking Switzerland, this event thus encourages them to consider digital transformation as more than just the adoption of new software or automation. It raises a particularly timely question in the age of AI: How can companies better leverage the information assets they already possess but are still underutilizing?
