Digitalization and Innovative Design Routines : The Effect of Digital Intensity on Design Routine Variety

As design has become critical strategic activity, design routines have been transformed through constant digitalization. Yet, we know little about whether such increased digital intensity influences routine variation and in which direction. This paper focuses on the effects of increasing digitalization on the design routine’s configural variety. We define and operationalize a new endogenous construct of ‘digital intensity’ to capture the level of digitalization within routines. We further introduce ‘configural variety’ as the overall variation in the composition of activities, such as the types of activity, its use of tools, included affordances, location, etc., in a given routine. Drawing on these constructs, we advance a contingency theory of configural routine variety that draws upon theories of design control and environmental adaptation. The proposed theory predicts a generally inverse effect between digital intensity and configural variety, but this relationship is moderated by environmental volatility and decision control.