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Through digitisation of physical artefacts and environments, the Internet of Things carries vast potential for process innovation. However, navigation of the quickly evolving technological landscape and identification of emerging opportunities for value creation remains challenging. To this end, we combine existing frameworks on information requirements, IT capability, and business value of IT. We evaluate the usability of these frameworks for IoT enabled innovation in our analysis of two sensor-based process innovation projects. We investigate the fit between process characteristics and technological functionality, and the implications of this alignment. Our analysis demonstrates that the framework provides a practically useful and theoretically coherent conceptual device for analyzing process characteristics and digital options to innovate processes. Furthermore, we find that IoT sensors are well suited to address connectivity and uncertainty requirements. However, in order to leverage them to address high equivocality requirements designers need deep contextual understanding to align IoT capability with information requirements.

In this chapter, the authors investigate the role of ICT in dealing with environmental challenges facing contemporary industrial organizations. Green IS research can essentially be divided into two groups, focusing on technology per se or on providing tools that decreases environmental impact. Building on a planned research project the authors propose innovation of ICT-based services, and especially collaborative services, as useful strategies for providing firms with sense and respond capabilities in relation to environmental challenges. They also argue research that research relevance and multi-disciplinary competencies are key themes that IS researcher needs to acknowledge in order to contribute to practitioners efforts.

The IT Management Group at Umeå University, Sweden, has developed a master program in IT management with emphasis on incorporating practice in the learning process. The basic premise lies in the use of reflection-in-action as an approach to presenting students with practical problems throughout the program. We discuss the ways in which practice is at the heart of the program, both as a tool for exemplifying codified knowledge such as technical skills and methods but also as arenas for situated knowledge creation and transfer where reflection and action are intertwined. The paper ends with a discussion of the program design, challenges in implementing the reflective practice approach and competencies the students need in their future professional roles.

Maritime transports play a vital role for several industries in enabling efficient and sustainable transportation of goods. Ports are central hubs in the transport chain since they connect the maritime and land-based transport systems. The central position of ports makes them critical enablers of efficiency through digital connectivity but also implies that they need to consider many types of participating agents with whom they form episodic tight couplings. However, the industry's digitalization level remains relatively low, and we know little of the challenges facing ports in increasing it. Through a case study of digitalization in Swedish small- and medium-sized ports handling different types of cargo and serving different types of transport modes, we identify key objectives and critical challenges underlying digitalization processes in ports.

Construction site operations often involve multiple actors with substantial variations in assumptions, expectations, and knowledge about technology. This could impair digitalization, which involves development of socio-cognitive environments that foster use of digital technology in new organizational procedures. Nevertheless, construction industry digitalization research has mainly addressed firm-level transformation of engineering phases and focused on technology, largely ignoring challenges arising from cognitive differences among actors at construction sites. Thus, we report a case study of attempts to spark construction site digitalization through a shared information management system (IMS). Applying technology frame of reference theory, we demonstrate how differences within groups among actors’ frames (inconsistency) shape group-level frame misalignment (incongruence) and thus digitalization outcomes. The IMS was implemented successfully at the focal firm’s headquarter and regional office levels. However, substantial construction site-level frame inconsistency led to misaligned group-level expectations and generated a fragmented socio-cognitive environment that hindered strategic digitalization. In conclusion, socio-cognitive environments at industry, construction site, and group levels recursively shape individual frames, and harmonization of frames is important to realize construction digitalization.

The generative nature of digital technology implies that during digital transformation (DT), organizations traverse multiple cycles of innovation and resource alignment. Still, extant research mainly chronicles DT as linear and contained phenomenon occurring in response to a dramatic environmental change event. How new resources align with previous ones into novel combinations, the work that supports continuous organizational capability building, and the temporal relationships between cycles of change in DT has received scant attention. Drawing on dynamic capability theory, we analyze innovation and resource alignment cycles driving DT at Lundqvist Trävaru AB, a small Swedish construction firm. Our study has at least two contributions. First, the analysis reveals three types of dynamic capabilities that shape resource generation and alignment in DT. Second, we provide a process model outlining the innovation and alignment cycles that fuel DT as they scale in the focal firm.

Due to the potential to extract useful knowledge by means of data mining and statistical analysis, there has been a significant increase in education that teach data science courses, issues degree certificates, and offers master’s programs. Such programs focus on three skill sets: 1) information technology skills necessary for accessing and working with data (e.g. relational databases, OLAP); 2) analytical skills drawing from various disciplines that enable data analysis (e.g. statistical analysis, machine learning, econometrics); 3) business and communication skills that facilitate appropriate problem formulation and value extraction from data science solutions. Successful educational programs need to synthesize and balance these three aspects.However, recent reports show that academic programs consistently underperform in preparing data science professionals. We studied the challenges and opportunities of teaching data science skills to students of diverse backgrounds (often the case in Master’s level programs). Our preliminary findings suggest that to balance the three skill sets educators need to recognize their distinct learning cycles. A learning cycle consists of exploration, concept introduction, and application and the emphasis on each stage varies greatly across skill sets. Technical data science skills rely on a multitude of separate systems and technologies involving numerous concepts that require continuous exploration, short cycles of learning (and assessment). Analytical skills require deeper engagement, hence longer learning cycles with an emphasis on concept introduction and formal instruction. Business and communication skills rely on engagement with high-level social systems (e.g. an organization, a market) and require longer involvement with the learning context, almost exclusively achieved by simulation projects or projects with industry partners. Our study indicates that data science education must consider the distinct learning cycles students experience, and suggests methods for doing so.

Digital ecosystem governance entails the management of complex, dynamic power relationships. As entrant platform providers seek to cultivate an ecosystem, they must carefully navigate these power relationships when dealing with governance tensions. Providers generally seek to leverage the ecosystem's generative potential by facilitating a variety of interactions and distributing design rights. Simultaneously, they need to ensure stability and order by imposing rules that resolve contentious matters and restrict system participants' degrees of freedom. This study explores how and why providers can induce ecosystem actors to engage in collaborative negotiation regarding such governance tensions through a case study of the introduction of an open data platform in the Swedish public transport sector. Our analysis offers three main contributions. First, it provides an empirical demonstration that entrepreneurial threats, as well as opportunities, can trigger platform launches and drive collaborative negotiation of digital ecosystem governance. Second, it extends conceptualizations of boundary resources beyond the current focus on transactional elements by demonstrating the role of interactive boundary resources in the negotiation of governance grounded in both social and systemic power relationships.Third, it shows how positive reinforcement can complement punitive measures to increase acceptance of design rules.

Digital Platforms impose organizing logics on ecosystems. Dependent on their configuration, they enable certain practices, relationships, and value distribution among actors while preventing alternatives. Incumbent platforms often have a strong power to implement contested configurations since they control access to attractive user groups/markets. However, emerging platforms have a small degree of bargaining power in relation to key actors since they have not yet achieved such a position. Although numerous studies detail governance strategies for incumbent platform ecosystems, research on how platform providers navigate competing concerns in emerging platform ecosystems remain rare. We report on a study of the establishment and continuous dynamics of a digital platform used for service innovation. We inductively identify a pattern of the dynamics in this navigation process, locate four salient tensions driving these dynamics, and provide insights on how the platform provider navigated them.

Connected vehicles generate new data streams that present promising opportunities for policymakers to monitor and learn from events and behavior. To explore what we can learn from how public entities leverage ubiquitous data streams for policy development and enforcement, we draw on a case study of the standard Mobility Data Specification (MDS) and its use by cities to regulate E-scooter operators. Our findings suggest that (1) the richness of real-time data changes the speed of policy revision, (2) data access enables moving some micro-decisions to the edge, and (3) policy will be formulated as fixed or flexible with different amendment rules.

This chapter explores issues associated with the implementation of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) in process industries and the inherent tension between control and flexibility in IT infrastructures. A qualitative case study of the alignment between organizational elements and the ERP system was conducted. The study illustrates the complexities involved with IT infrastructure adaptation and the extensive organizational consequences accompanying process and data standardization. The main contribution to the body of knowledge on IT infrastructure is a suggestion that fit between the inherent standardization an ERP system conveys and processes in the host organization are key aspects, hence implementation is more likely to contribute with desired effects in relation to stable and universal processes. A prerequisite for accomplishing limitation of the scope of ERP systems to these processes is a truly modular system.

This dissertation investigates the role of information technology (IT) in organizational strategy. Specifically, it examines how organizations can persist in turbulent competitive landscapes characterized by IT innovations. Underlying premises for this dissertation are that: (1) ubiquitous IT implies constant disruptions from digital innovation, (2) IT and practice are becoming fused, and (3) organizational strategies are dynamically linked with practice, i.e. they are reciprocally related through what organizations do rather than have. To investigate such IT strategizing processes, I outline a conceptual framework for analyzing how organizations can generate digital capability, i.e. a collection of routines for strategizing by leveraging digital assets to create differential value. Digital assets here refer to the complement of available resources and competencies for IT design and implementation. Based on the notion of dynamic capability and evolutionary theory, this framework emphasizes the importance of sensing, seizing and transforming abilities for generating digital capability.

As organizational practices are becoming fused with IT scholars have argued that attempting to disentangle them analytically is futile. In a similar vein, organizational strategy is increasingly reliant on available IT resources for both formulation and execution. In the IS field it is widely acknowledged that IT has both enabling and inhibiting consequences for organizations. Drawing on the resource-based view of the firm and theory on organizational capabilities, the notion of IT capability has been widely used as a conceptual tool for analyzing these dual strategic effects of IT. Considering the explosive advances in computing, network and interaction that have resulted in IT being ubiquitous and deeply embedded in contemporary practices, recent research argues for the need to move beyond the functional view of technology implicit in the IT capability notion. A key aspect to address for such broadening of the perspective is the coevolution of IT and business practices, i.e. who (or what) leads, who or what follows, and whether such a causal distinction is meaningful.

Grounded in the outlined conceptual framework, this dissertation examines how organizations can build digital capability to both enable large variation and complexity of feasible competitive actions, and reduce inhibiting effects of IT. The empirical investigation is situated in three distinct domains: boundary spanning IT innovation, transformation of existing IT resources, and hybridization of technology through digitalization of production equipment. These investigations are presented in five research papers.

The dissertation contribute to knowledge of IT strategy by: (1) explicating the construct of digital capability, (2) providing a framework for coevolutionary strategizing processes, (3) presenting an empirical illustration of the coevolution of IT and business strategies, and (4) offer specific insights on design and orchestration of processes for digital capability generation.

This paper analyzes an ERP system implementation from a perspective of complex system and standardization. The examined IT structure can be characterized as a loosely coupled integration with the ERP system as a central integration facilitator. This solution allowed the company to make use of standardization benefits, filling the need of special functionality and at the same time limiting negative unexpected consequences such as decreased activity support and increased complexity. The paper shows how ERP´s can contribute to standardization and integration efforts in IT environments withpeculiar demands on functionality. It also demonstrates how negative side effects related to implementation of ERP systems can be managed and limited.

Collaborative forms of innovation between heterogeneous actors have lately attracted much attention from scholars and practitioners alike. While there is a growing interest from industrial actors to make use of academic knowledge, universities are facing increased incentives and pressure to contribute to economic growth. Despite these efforts, effects of academy/industry collaboration are hard to trace. Except from problems of measuring effects contradictions between stability desired in alliances and the flexibility often advocated in alliances in combination with heterogeneous understandings of cooperation can offer some explanation on this issue. Based on a qualitative case study this paper examines collaborative efforts between twelve IT research centers and industrial actors. The notion of Trading Zones is used as a lens through which negotiation of understandings and efforts are analyzed. More specifically we suggest that collaboration often takes place in fractioned trading zones with heterogeneous cultures. Reducing heterogeneity, creating boundary objects and interactional expertise are found to be strategies used by actors in order to coordinate efforts.

We examine an attempt to implement a joint IT infrastructure between a large multi-national high-technology manufacturing firm and a large mining firm. We identify several occasions where innovation failed and the manufacturing firm could not establish a new network of partnerships with their customers enabled by the introduced IT capabilities. Our study highlights a change in the forms of materiality within used control system technology – a shift from controlling isolated manufacturing devices into controlling networks of "smart" devices connected by Internet computing. While the new networked and ubiquitous computing infrastructure holds a potential for radical service innovation, this potential has not been fulfilled. One of the factors accounting for the failure is that the global IT innovation strategy was not well aligned to the local context and existing networks of actors. To explain this unfolding of events we coin the term "decelerated innovation".

(a) Situation faced: ABB faced four decades of successive digitization of core technology in the process automation business, i.e., platform technology for process control. The infusion of digital technology into the physical production environment generated recurrent disruptions of the business model calling for drastic adjustments that lead to an emergent transformation process. Digitization of ABB’s business scaled and traversed multiple social and technical settings whereby the platform evolved from product-focused into sustaining a digital ecosystem comprising a complex system of actors and value generation processes.

(b) Action taken: Successive digitization with four distinct strategic foci; (1) replacement of analogue equipment for digitally enabled efficiency in restricted and well defined products and processes, (2) internal integration of information systems for efficiency in maintenance and engineering, (3) open and semi-open boundary resources for improved data integration and information services with critical partners, and (4) orchestration and adaptation of externally induced technical innovation on the platform to enable data-driven operations.

(c) Results achieved: ABB transformed their operations and successfully adapted to digital disruption by adopting new business models. The company managed the threat of digital disruption by newcomers and incumbents in the software industry, despite the constant dissolution of product boundaries and the risk of unbundling of value creation. ABB is now a global leader in the process automation industry, and the digital agenda and capabilities have been integrated into the mission and business model.

(d) Lessons learned: (1) Physical and digital architecture enables different dynamics (episodic change vs. emergence), hybrid architecture is subject to clashes between these logics. (2) Digitalization is cumulative and emergent. In this case, it happened across four phases categorized by shifts in functional levels, decision rights, combinatorial options, boundary configurations and value propositions. (3) Since digitalization inverts the organization’s strategic emphasis, collaboration across boundaries becomes a pivotal capability to succeed. (4) Through new functionality and more sophisticated responses, digitalization increases organizational capacity to deal with complexity, but also triggers new types of stimuli. (5) When faced with significant tensions, signals from management generate amplifying deviation loops with unexpected consequences (butterfly effect).

This paper draws on complex adaptive systems (CAS) theory to explore the transformation of an analog automation product platform as it was infused with extensive and deepening digital capacities over a 40-year period. Our case demonstrates how the deepening digitization of components and functions drives complexity by connecting the platform to multiple social and technical settings and producing new interactions and information exchanges. The increased connectivity and dynamism invited unexpected and significant architectural and organizational shifts that moved the platform toward an ecosystem-centered organizing logic. CAS theory and its notion of constrained generating procedures (CGPs) are used to analyze how new connections and interactions produced a multilevel and nonlinear change in the platform organization. We offer two main contributions. First, we provide a novel empirical analysis of how product platform digitization leads to phase transitions and show the mediating role of three mechanisms in this process treated as CGPs: interaction rules, design control, and stimuli-response variety. Second, we demonstrate the multilevel and recursive nature of digitally driven growth in physical product platforms.

While extant research on open innovation and knowledge brokering has shown that boundary-spanning innovation hold great promise, less attention has been paid to how such efforts are established and managed in the context of academia-industry collaboration for IT innovation. The paper thus aims to provide insights into design and orchestration of boundary-spanning IT innovation efforts involving academia and industry. We report experiences from a longitudinal case study of the design and orchestration of a platform for collaboration in a large-scale regional IT innovation program – ProcessIT Innovations – with particular emphasis on the management challenges involved in facilitating interactions between IT providers, IT user organizations and IT researchers. Combining insights from the case study and innovation theory, we contribute to the literature on boundary spanning IT innovation by pointing to the influence of knowledge brokering capabilities in generating innovation dynamics, identifying configurations options in terms of innovation modes, and, providing an empirical illustration of the role of network diversity and size in implementing such configurations.

Purpose

– Although the potential of innovation networks that involve both university and industry actors is great variances in cultures, goals and knowledge poses significant challenges. To better understand management of such innovation networks, the authors investigate different strategies for balancing diversity. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Design/methodology/approach– In this multiple case study, the authors draw on network and trading zone theory to examine the strategies of four research centers that govern university-industry innovation networks.

Findings

– The authors provide empirically grounded descriptions of strategies for balancing diversity in innovation processes, extend previous theorizations by suggesting two types of trading zones (transformative and performative), and identify four strategy configuration dimensions (means of knowledge trade, tie configuration, knowledge mobility mechanisms and types of trust).

Research limitations/implications

– Further research is needed on transferability of results when, e.g. cultural collaboration and communication patterns change, and performance implications of different configurations. The research provides conceptual tools for future research on the impact of different diversity strategies.

Practical implications

– The findings point to the importance of identifying desired types of innovation outcomes and designing the appropriate level of diversity. To implement the selected strategy, managers need to configure communication channels and strength of relationships, establish associated capacity for knowledge transfer and build appropriate levels of trust.

Originality/value

– While extant research has provided a solid understanding of benefits from diversity in boundary spanning innovation processes, this paper outlines strategies for managing associated challenges.

While research has shown that investments in IT capability may translate into improved firm performance, how and why they do is still a source of debate. Drawing on financial options thinking, recent research suggests that managers can support appropriate investment decisions by examining digital options. However, current research has not effectively translated the financial options construct into the IT domain, making it difficult to rigorously examine digital options. To address this void, we revisit general options theory and review current notions of digital options. To support understanding, we extend current theorizing by offering a rigorous conceptual foundation that defines the digital option life cycle and relationships to neighboring constructs. To support practice, we present principles for examining digital options for a specific business process. To illustrate the detailed workings of the theory, we examine a production planning process within the dairy industry to arrive at a set of desirable and feasible IT capability investments. The proposed theory supports managerial practice by offering a rigorous and actionable foundation for digital options thinking. It also sets an agenda for academic research by articulating theory-based constructs and principles that are subject to further empirical and theoretical investigation.

Digital service platforms need to be embedded in external device platforms because they are not bundled with a proprietary device. From our analysis of the Spotify music streaming service, we have identified three strategic objectives that service platform providers need to pursue as they establish and scale their services. Achieving each objective will require trade-offs, and we described the tactics Spotify used to manage these trade-offs. We conclude by providing recommendations on how other service platform providers can apply these tactics

Research on digital platform evolution is largely focused on how platform-owners leverage boundary resources to facilitate and control contributions from external developers to extend the functional diversity and scope of a digital device. However, our knowledge of the digital platforms that carve out their existence exclusively in the service layer of industry architectures, i.e. without proprietary device connections, is limited. The concept of digital service platforms directs attention to such platforms, the role of end-users as value co-creators, and devices as requisite, but not necessarily proprietary, distribution mechanisms for service. Based on a longitudinal case study of Spotify, this paper contributes by demonstrating that digital service platform evolution is characterized by specific architectural conditions that rationalize the use of boundary resources for extending scale rather than scope, and for resourcing and controlling not only developers but also end-users as a means to strategically adjust the evolutionary process.

Open Data Marketplaces have emerged as a mode of adressing open data adoption barriers. However, knowledge of how such marketplaces affect Digital service innovation in open data ecosystems is limited. This paper explores their value proposition for open  for open data users based on an exploratory case study. Five prominent perceived values are indentified: lower task complexity, higher access to knowledge, increased possibilities to infleunce, lower risk and higher visibility. The impact on open data adoption barriers is analyzed and the consequences for  ecosystem sustainability is discussed. The paper concludes that open data marketplaces can lower the threshold of using open data by providing better access to open data and associated support services, and by increasing knolwedge transfer withi the ecosystem.

Open government data (OGD) can enable outbound open innovation (OI) that is beneficial to society. However, innovation barriers hinder OGD users from generating value. While previous studies have detailed a large number of such barriers, little is known of how different types of OGD users are affected, and when the barriers appear in their innovation processes. To this end, this paper describes a case study of distributed service development in the Swedish public transport sector. The contribution to extant research is twofold. Firstly, based on an inductive analysis, three OGD user archetypes are proposed: employees, entrepreneurs and hobbyists. Secondly, the study finds that the significance of distinct innovation barriers varies across phases of the services’ lifecycles and depending on the OGD users’ motivation, objective, pre-conditions and approach. Drawing on these insights, we propose that OGD initiatives aimed at facilitating outbound OI to a greater extent should address the barriers that appear during diffusion of innovations, the barriers that are not directly related to the OGD provision, and the barriers that are experienced by non-obvious OGD user groups.

Having secured venture capital for their startups, digital entrepreneurs face a critical transition to the postinvestment phase. They must evolve new organizational models and demonstrate their capacity to operate in the present while maintaining attention to the future. This transition unfolds in a hyperturbulent context in which rapid growth is crucial owing to competitive advantages from scale and scope. While the present-future tension has received extensive attention in other domains, we know little about how it manifests and affects digital startups transitioning into the postinvestment phase. In this article, we examine entrepreneurs’ challenges during this transition through an action research study of the interactions between a venture capital firm and a set of digital startups. We identify eight salient challenges conceptualized as transition traps, then define and validate tactics for increasing digital startups’ readiness to navigate them. We identify the main transition traps and provide actionable advice for increasing digital startups’ readiness to navigate them.