HOW TO ESTABLISH A DIGITAL ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE: INSIGHTS FROM A MULTIPLE CASE STUDY

Digital transformation poses numerous challenges for established companies that need to change their established processes and routines. To enable successful digital transformation, the organizational culture must be adapted to the new requirements of an increasingly digitized environment. To date, however, we know very little about what a digital organizational culture looks like and how it can be established in incumbent companies. To address this shortcoming, we conducted a multiple case study with seven cases in different industries. Our findings allow us to discuss the concept of digital organizational culture in detail and develop a model that provides actionable insights into how such a culture can be established. Finally, we highlight opportunities for future research

Innovation Networks and Digital Innovation: How Organizations Use Innovation Networks in a Digitized Environment

The digital transformation dramatically lowered the costs for communication and coordination, thus, enabling new forms of cooperation. Companies seize this opportunity by creating new types of innovation networks. Until now, we know little about which types of innovation networks are currently prevalent and why organizations use them. In this paper, we build upon a recent study dealing with categorization of innovation networks and present the results of an exploratory series of case studies conducted with 27 high-level executives from 11organizations in various industries. Our results indicate that companies are maintaining high-levels of centralized control over the innovation network, which is contrary to what the literature suggests. Furthermore, there is a strong trend towards more heterogeneous knowledge within a network. Additionally, we identify mechanisms that help companies to transition from one type of innovation network to another one and investigate why organizations use certain innovation networks

Designing Scaled-agile Organizations: A Taxonomy of Design Criteria

Scaled-agile organizations (SAOs) have emerged as a popular response to the rapid digital transformation of entire industries. However, we currently lack a conceptual understanding of potential design choices of SAOs and calls for effective organizational structures remain only partially answered. Hence, we seek to answer the question of how different designs affect the implementation of SAOs in incumbent organizations. We do this by developing a taxonomy following the approach by Nickerson et al. and based on data from six cases studies. Our findings provide a taxonomy that identifies a set of eight design criteria across two levels. The taxonomy advances our understanding of the different SAO designs and helps to increase the conceptual clarity of SAOs. We provide a valuable basis for further research and supply practical insights

All or Nothing - How the Nexus of Different Corporate Innovation Vehicles Fosters Digital Transformation (Research in Progress)

The ongoing convergence and rapid development of digital technologies are putting pressure on incumbents not only to digitize their operations, but also to continuously challenge their business models. To respond to such environmental changes, drive organizational renewal, and produce novel value adding digital solutions, incumbents are currently experimenting with various corporate innovation vehicles. In the context of digitalization, however, there is little integration regarding their exact nature as well as their roles and goals for the core organization, making it increasingly difficult for incumbents to choose the right vehicle, organize it, and govern it properly. Hence, by adopting a multiple case study design with 50 interviews across five digital innovation labs, five corporate accelerators, and eight corporate venture builders, we aim to answer the questions of what the goals of different corporate innovation vehicles are and how they pursue them

DIGITAL CONVERGENCE: EXAMINING THE DISSOLUTION OF INDUSTRIAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL BOUNDARIES

Digital convergence is frequently discussed in research. The concept of convergence describes how formerly separate areas are increasingly merging. So far, however, we have only a rudimentary understanding of digital convergence for several reasons. First, digital convergence is not clearly conceptualized and used differently across contexts. Second, we have little insight into what is converging and at what pace. We conceptualize digital convergence by arguing that its sociotechnical nature requires jointly considering technical and social aspects. Our analysis of a longitudinal patent data set covering 31 years and 677,045 patents from 124 industries shows that (1) industry boundaries defined by the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) are dissolving as companies interact with technological knowledge outside their industrial boundaries. (2) Specific technology classes defined in the International Patent Classification (IPC) increasingly cite - and converge with - other technology classes. We close by highlighting promising avenues for future research on digital convergence

Governing Digital Innovation: Exploring the Role of Chief Digital Officers

The digitization has disrupted industries and challenged incumbent organizations. To profit from the distinct characteristics of digital technology and to enhance digital innovation success, organizations have introduced mechanisms to access knowledge sources residing within and outside the organization. At the same time, new managerial positions, such as the Chief Digital Officer (CDO), have been established to organize the adoption of new technologies and champion digital innovation. We explore how CDOs govern organization’s digital innovation success by assuming the role of an innovation champion. Moreover, we propose that internal reorganization and sourcing of external knowledge offer important mechanisms for CDOs to enhance organization’s absorptive capacity, and indirectly digital innovation success. We plan to test the proposed research model empirically by performing a regression analysis of multivariate longitudinal data of the world’s largest manufacturers

The Role of Digital Technology in Sustainability: A Literature Review

Digital technologies can help to fulfill social needs through innovative and socially-embedded solutions. The research fields of digital sustainability, digital social innovation, and social entrepreneurship are about exploring how the tools of our digital age can be designed, adapted, and aligned to achieve local and global social needs. However, despite the current interest, there remain conceptual ambiguities regarding the focus of each field. This review examines current research by reviewing 24 articles across the Basket of Eight and two IS conferences. Our results clarify the different focus areas within each research field but also show that the three research fields overlap due to the remaining conceptual ambiguities. To enable more focus in future research, we discuss implications regarding the conceptual overlap, propose first steps to address them, and close by developing eight avenues for future research

THE CURRENT STATE AND FUTURE OPPORTUNITIES OF DIGITAL INNOVATION: A LITERATURE REVIEW

Digital innovation has already disrupted numerous industries and is challenging extant theories about innovation. However, until now there is no comprehensive review that systemizes the current state of knowledge on digital innovation. Since publication rates on digital innovation increased fivefold since 2015, it is especially important to understand how the field is developing. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview on how the field has developed, identify under-researched topics and under-used methods to guide future research. In our structured literature review, we systemize the findings by dif-ferentiating between two dimensions - digital innovation as a process and as an outcome. Furthermore, we explore determinants of digital innovation by taking three different levels of analysis into consider-ation: individual, organizational and environmental. By including extant research until today, we pro-vide a comprehensive summary on current knowledge on digital innovation and identify opportunities for future research

Championing Digital Innovation Success: The Role of CDOs

The disruptive nature of digital innovation has led incumbent organizations to face enormous challenges and pressure. To address the fundamentally new nature of digital innovations, incumbents have established new managerial roles, such as Chief Digital Officers (CDOs), to champion innovation. We explore the role these innovation champions play for digital innovation success and argue that internal reorganization and the sourcing of external knowledge constitute important mechanisms through which CDOs might contribute to organizations’ digital innovation success. We will empirically test our proposed research model using longitudinal data on the world’s largest companies. Our study is expected to contribute to literature on knowledge recombination and innovation management by examining how innovation champions at the C-level use internal reorganization and sourcing of external knowledge to enhance digital innovation success