Driving digital innovation in incumbent firms : the integration of technologies, practices, and languages

Sammanfattning: Manufacturing firms are increasingly integrating their digitized physical products with digital services. This shift introduces new challenges and tensions as established product development practices need to be complemented with new digital service development practices. In the specific context of incumbent manufacturing firms developing integrated solutions of products and digital services, this thesis investigates the integration of product and digital service development practices and related technologies. The findings show that the implementation of common agile development cycles, including the identification of solution patterns of components, creates an integration of development practices across technology domains. Furthermore, by integrating a dynamic sourcing process to the agile practices, a new relationship development path with external firms is formed that contradicts previous practice and theory. In the dynamic sourcing process, the relationship develops from an early limited exploration of opportunities to a focus on operational efficiency when delivering products and services at scale. A successful integration of development practices (know-how) and technologies is crucial for organizational learning and the long-term survival of firms. To further theorize the evolution of knowledge and know-how, the thesis proposes a framework for a language-based view of firms where alphabets and grammar include any physical or non-physical representation of knowledge.