Abstract
Digital technologies are vital for firms’ activities in the digital age. This paper investigates digital technology groups and the implications of their technology novelty (incremental or radical) and breadth (one-sectoral or multi-sectoral) for digital transformation in manufacture intensive industries. Digital technology groups represent cohesive overlaps across individual technologies. Adopting a topic modelling research method of autonomous vehicle patents in firms operating in Sweden and a confirmatory survey with the inventors of those patents, this paper identified 26 digital technology groups transforming the autonomous vehicle sector. We find that digital technology groups are distributed across four technology paths: upgrading, spanning, transforming, and disrupting. Our findings suggest the ongoing digital transformation involves a creative accumulative response of incumbents and new entrants. This is developing new technologies outside existing capabilities and building on existing knowledge. This study bridges the previous literature on technological change and the characteristics digital technologies.
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