Digital Products and Virtual Work Processes

What are digital products?

Search and translation services, route planners for cars, and social networks – all these are virtual products. This means that they’re produced in virtual space, are composed of binary data, and exist only in the virtual world.

What are virtual work processes?

Virtual work processes don’t result in the manufacture of any tangible products as such, but involve instead the performance of virtual activities and services. This category might include, for example, journalists who write their articles using computers or graphic designers who no longer draw their new designs by hand but do so exclusively using a computer programme. Other good examples are: lawyers who advise their clients by email; doctors who offer patients online appointments; politicians who make themselves available to their constituents through online consultations; and teachers who offer private lessons online.

How do virtual work processes affect the environment?

Individual occupational groups are now able to carry out their activities – and especially the work processes themselves – in a completely different way. By increasing the ratio of virtual work processes, individual sub-aspects of the workload can be interlinked much better. Work progress can be documented and tracked directly, and colleagues are able to access the virtual work product from anywhere and make their own contributions – at least so long as they have an Internet connection. In a nutshell, virtual production makes it possible for us to network much more intensely with one another and to divide up our work – and in real time at that.

How widespread are virtual work processes?

In particular, it is those services that are mostly rendered by university graduates that take place in the virtual workspace – for example, in the media industry. This type of work is likely to have a decisive impact on the future of our working world. Not only will it spread across all industries, but it will also bring with it a completely new understanding of work processes and of work itself: it will offer employees greater freedom, flexibility and self-determination – but also cause more insecurity. For employers, it means more potential customers as well as a much bigger market, but also stronger competition in the marketplace.