Navigating Digital Innovation - The Complementary Effect of Organizational and Knowledge Recombination

This paper reports findings from an exploratory series of case studies undertaken to better understand the impacts of digitization on organizational and knowledge recombination. While ‘digitalized firms’ are expected to frequently update their knowledge (e.g., big data analyses, ‘smarter’ products) and organizational structures (e.g., agile team structures, open innovation approaches), we know little about the interrelations between recombining knowledge and organizational capabilities. Therefore, we collected data from 19 interviewees in 8 different firms from four industries. Our study integrates theoretical notions from the literature on organizational and knowledge recombination theory and categorizes the emerging shifts arising from digitization. Our results suggest that the identified changes in the digital age manifest as increased proximity to the customer (by fully digitizing the customer interface and digital co-creation) and celerity to the markets (cross-organizational teams, and collaborations with start-ups and competitors) affecting the whole organization.