Emergence of collective digital innovations through the process of control point driven network reconfiguration and reframing

Abstract

Decentralized digital technologies require multiple organizations to collectively create digital innovations. Control over the resources required for digital innovations is often therefore dispersed among multiple actors. Actors may have conflicting interests and business models which cause collective digital innovations to come to a standstill. While existing research suggests various factors that block collective innovation processes, there is still little understanding of how organizations can overcome standstills, and progress to bringing digital innovations to market. The main question addressed in this paper is: How do collective digital innovation initiatives overcome standstills in order to progress in bringing the innovations to market? We offer a novel perspective on the process of developing collective digital innovations based on a longitudinal case study of mobile banking in the Netherlands. Our case shows how parties have collaborated to learn about new opportunities for distributing control and framing solutions, while the actual commercialization of the mobile payment solutions was performed by individual actors. The framework shows how digital innovations emerge through a series of collective innovation processes that build upon each other through control point driven network reconfiguration and reframing.