<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>The Digital Earth Project aims at a strong interdisciplinary collaboration of the various Earth science disciplines and data science, to foster digitalization and the application of data science methods. As this is a highly complex interdisciplinary endeavour that involves eight research centres and many scientists, a success evaluation was deployed after the first half of the project. A social science-oriented evaluation was conducted, in which a World Cafe and a survey were used to evaluate the success of the collaboration and opportunities for improvement. Results indicate a strong need among participating scientists to more clearly understand and advocate for the overarching goals, have more face-to-face interaction, optimize the use of existing research infrastructure, and develop a sound perspective for knowledge transfer and long-term continuation of the developed approaches. It was deduced that individuals shape the process and that digitization is more than just a technical matter, but depends heavily on individuals and the process of implementation.</jats:p>