The global museum ecosystem is undergoing a profound digital transition, with the integration of technologies in every aspect of its existence, from content creation and presentation to communication and management. The global health crisis caused by Covid-19 has dramatically highlighted how crucial its level of digital maturity is. Institutions that had already invested in advanced technologies and staff training were able to maintain essential contact with their audience during the most critical moments. When digital content became the only means of reaching people, many organisations realised that they had not invested sufficiently in this field.

Strategic planning is still struggling to take hold and a significant number of museums have not yet adopted a strategic plan for digital innovation. Many organisations have started to include a section on the digital transition in other planning documents such as strategic plans.

Digital innovation projects are intrinsically interdisciplinary and present numerous technical and organisational complexities that require precise planning of economic and human resources, technologies, solutions, actions to be implemented and the time needed to achieve the set objectives. Institutions often focus their investments on the creation of online content and the digitisation of their collections. The adoption of digital tools to improve the visitor experience is also seeing considerable development. It is essential to develop a digital culture that permeates all the functions and activities of the museum, going beyond the vision of digital development as a series of isolated and disconnected projects.

In this context, the museum transforms itself into a sentient organism, capable of integrating new levels of interaction in innovative temporal and spatial dimensions. It is essential to promote awareness and critical thinking regarding the ongoing transformation process. At the same time, it is also necessary to have the integration of competent, operational and up-to-date professionals who can support the digital transition of our museum community. Although there has been a significant increase in the adoption of digital tools in recent years, more than half of cultural institutions have not implemented any mechanism to improve the digital skills of their staff. This situation highlights the need for a more targeted and structured investment in digital skills within the museum community.

Among the many aspects that could be explored in greater depth, we believe it is useful to focus in particular on two points: the redefinition of the relationship between visitors, exhibition spaces and their contents, and the role of digital storytelling. Museums that have invested in digitisation have not only improved their resilience during the pandemic, but also expanded their audience and the ways in which their content can be enjoyed, demonstrating how a well-planned digital strategy can radically transform the role and impact of these institutions in contemporary society. A Chinese box approach forces us to look at the issue from different perspectives and, although the subject cannot be dealt with exhaustively here, it invites us to take an overall view but, above all, to always prioritise the content we want to convey and the objectives we intend to achieve.