Evolving the Modular Layered Architecture in Digital Innovation: The Case of the Car's Instrument Cluster

Digital innovation entails the combining of digital and physical components to produce novel products. The materiality of digital artifacts, particularly the separation between their material (e.g., hardware) and immaterial features (e.g., software and data), which is expressed through a layered architecture, lays the foundation for the generative potential of digital innovation. Gaining an understanding of the work involved in creating such a layered architecture and tracing the shifts in the material sub-stratum as physical products are digitalized provides insight into the organizational implications of digital innovation. To this end, we study the digitalization of the automobile by focusing on the evolution of a car manufacturer's instrument cluster or Driver Information Module (DIM) from 2005 onwards. Based on laddering interviews with 20 people involved in the development of three increasingly digitized DIMs, this paper traces the progressive dissociation between the material and non-material aspects of digitalized artifacts and the organizational implications of evolving a modular layered architecture.