Editorial: Open the doors for the OTTO Newsroom

What was it like 200 years ago, back in 1818? Did people have any idea that they were in the middle of the Industrial Revolution? Did they know that nothing would ever be the same again when the first steam-powered machines arrived and they had to work side-by-side with them in the factories?

Historians can very probably tell us what things were like back then. But we are the only ones who can answer the question of how we should approach our own Industrial Revolution – digitalisation. And here we intend to play our part: welcome to the new OTTO Newsroom!

A magazine on digital business

Sure, this is a website published by the online retailer OTTO. However, it’s not a ‘press website’ about the company OTTO. Press releases, PR soundbites and promotion campaigns? You won’t find them here. No – this is an online magazine that aims to shed light on every aspect of digital business.

We believe that this topic has been kept under lock and key too long in the digital ivory towers of the tech behemoths – behind closed gates, leaving the interested public straining for a glimpse of one or two genuine insights through the keyhole. However, if we want to place the digital transformation right at the heart of society – and we definitely do! – then we as a company need to play our own small part in this. So with our Newsroom we’re opening the doors to our own digital transformation engine room.

Of course, we’ll be sharing stories with you about technology, Artificial Intelligence, smartspeakers and the IoT (‘Internet of Things’). But much more than this, we’ll be discussing how companies are approaching the digital transformation as a cultural issue, what mistakes they’re making, how work itself is changing in the digital economy – and how this is changing us at the same time. This is about which ideas really work and which don’t, as well as where people are feeling the impact of digitalisation in their own lives.

We're throwing our doors open

OTTO is one of Europe’s largest online shopping platforms and thus a retail expert. Retail is by nature very close to people, and also therefore to those places where digitalisation is having a broad impact on real life. This is why we are convinced that, particularly as a well-networked large company, we have unique stories to share with you about digital business – from experiments with Augmented Reality, through insights into the future of Digital Assistants, to handling social media crises.

By the way, ‘we’ means the OTTOCOMMS team, i.e. OTTO Corporate Communications. Together we’ve produced the concept for this magazine and will be bringing it to life in the months to come, as editors who are actors at the same time – individuals who not only talk about digitalisation but who are also part of teams actively working on it.

We will frequently be complementing our reports with independent external perspectives. Our constant goal is to deliver genuine stories instead of slick PR bulletins, and to provide you with diverse opinions and attitudes instead of a narrow, blinkered corporate vision!
Enjoy!