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

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.