Ivo ZANDER, Professor, Uppsala University
Katarina BLOMKVIST, Associate Professor, Uppsala University 
Philip KAPPEN, Associate Professor, Uppsala University
 

Track's Contacts : 

ivo.zander[AT]fek.uu.se
katarina.blomkvist[AT]fek.uu.se

Digitization, digitalization, and digital transformation are all part of the evolving digital economy. As digital innovation may cut across all of these dimensions, it offers an interesting theoretical and empirical arena for exploring certain aspects of the innovation process. Digital innovation can be highly complex as it may incorporate both digitization and digitalization in the form of new digital products and services and parallel digitally based improvements of internal organizational processes. It may further extend beyond organizational boundaries, as suppliers and customers are affected by or become actively involved in the innovation process. Codifiable technological interfaces may indeed allow for an unusual amount of innovation efforts that cut across otherwise distinctive organizational boundaries, and they should make the innovation process relatively insensitive to geographical distances. In many cases, digital innovation calls into question attitudes to value creation and value capturing, as reflected in traditional and established business models.

Both the amount and direction of digital innovation may be dictated by institutional contexts and degrees of digital transformation, as it requires both acceptance and sustained efforts to embrace digitalization at the societal level. All in all, there are reasons to expect that digital innovation can expose salient and even unique elements of the innovation process, as compared to innovation processes that prevail in more traditional settings and industries. Specific issues and topics of the digital innovation track include but are not limited to:

- The nature of digital innovation
- Digital innovation across internal and external organizational boundaries
- The geographical boundaries of digital innovation
- Managing complex digital innovation
- Value creation and value capturing in digital innovation
- The interplay between digital transformation and digital innovation
- The sources, drivers and consequences of digital innovation