Article - Digital Innovation Management - Nambisan et al., 2017 Flashcards
What is digital innovation according to Nambisan et al?
The creation of (and consequent change in) market offerings, business processes, or models that result from the use of digital technology.
–> In digital innovation, digital technologies and associated digitizing processes form an innate part of the new idea and/or its development, diffusion or assimilation.
Which 3 important phenomena are captured in digital innovation according to Nambisan et al?
- It includes a range of outcomes (products, platforms, etc.)
- It includes a range of digital tools and infrastructure for making innovation possible;
- It is possible that outcomes are diffused, assimilated, or adapted to specific use contexts such as typically experienced with digital platforms
What is digital innovation management?
The practices, processes and principles that underlie the effective orchestration of digital innovation.
What are three key assumptions about innovation management that might not be true anymore?
- Innovation is a well-bounded phenomenon focused on fixed products and therefore the question on how innovation evolves is a well-bounded question;
- The nature of innovation agency is centralized (pre-defined), and therefore actors can organize for innovation.
- Innovation processes and outcomes are distinctly different phenomenon, and therefore there is interaction between the nature and organization of innovation.
Why is innovation as a well-bounded phenomenon questionable?
- Digital artifacts have unique characteristics, such as being malleable, open and editable;
- Scope, features and value of digital products can evolve even after the product is launched;
- Most innovations remain somewhat incomplete and can be expanded by various participating innovation actors;
- The digitization of innovation processes breaks down barriers between innovation phases, but also changes the time horizon of these stages (Think 3D printing that speeds op product development).
Why is the centralization of innovation agency questionable?
- There is a shift to a distributed innovation agency;
- There is a dynamic collection of actors involved in the innovation process;
- Involved actors can opt in and opt out in the process;
- The reason is that digital technologies are infused in innovation outcomes and processes
- > Digital platforms enable collectives to collaborate
- -> Collaboration between collectives is enabled by digital infrastructures (github, kickstarter)
Why is the assumption that innovation processes and outcomes are separately questionable?
- Using digital tools in the digital process infrastructure can lead to interactions between different trades, stakeholders that generate ‘wakes of innovation’
- Use of digital technologies in processes can shift innovation focus and create new activities, thus influencing outcomes;
- Processes and outcomes shape each other;
Which four new logics or theoretical lenses are proposed about digitization of innovation?
- Dynamic problem-solution pairing;
- Socio-cognitive sensemaking;
- Technology affordances and constraints;
- Orchestration;
What is dynamic problem-solution pairing?
Digital innovation involves the continuous matching of the potential of new and/or newly recombined digital technologies with original market offerings;
What are the key takeaways for dynamic problem-solution pairing?
- Innovation space has fluid boundaries (flexibility due to digital technologies)
- There is potential that some actors innovate on a specific layer of the product to make a new product;
- -> So not pre-defined
- Innovation comes from focusing on (un)identified needs of users;
- Innovation is a temporary set of couplings between needs, affordances and digital artifact features;
–> Think for example at a extra functionality build into google maps that warns you if police is there. This is an innovation, but uses the memory of what was already done in it;
What is socio-cognitive sensemaking?
Technology is being made sense of. This is done by an individual innovator’s cognition, but also by the innovators social system of collectives of organizations and individuals.
-> Acknowledges the fluid boundaries of the innovation space and the heterogeneous actors that populate it.
What are the key takeaways from socio-cognitive sensemaking?
- Successful digital innovation calls for continuous de-framing and re framing of innovation outcomes and processes;
- Inertia comes when there is a dominant frame and no new frames are emerging –> no innovation will happen;
- Innovation spans multiple product categories due to the layered modular architecture;
- Frames are developed and shared through sensemaking interactions between innovating actors, and those are affected by their experiences;
- Digital artifacts are unique: they tell you about past narratives and future narratives –> Digital artifacts used in new context –> users share through digital infrastructures (social media, crowdsourcing) –> create new narratives;
What is meant by technology affordances and constraints?
Affordance:
Action potential offered by the technology, with the focus on how an actors goals and capabilities can be related to the potential offered by the features of the technology.
–> It explains how and why the same technology can be repurposed by different users or in different contexs;
What are the key takeaways from the technology affordances and constraints theory?
Considers digital technology use as sets of affordances and constraints for particular innovating actors and helps explain how and why the ‘same’ technology can be repurposed by different actors or has different innovation outcomes in different contexts
–> Acknowledges the receding distinctions between innovation processes and outcomes and calls for a better understanding of their intermingling;
- It links the features of a technology with the context in which it is used, meaning it can help explain why a technology succeeds in a specific context but not in the other;
What is meant by orchestration?
Orchestration refers to the capability to build and manage innovation networks;
Now, digital innovations have the potential to match problems/needs with solutions –> therefore, can be seen as an orchestrator;
