Exploring Strategic Rhythms in the Digital Economy

Abstract

Interest in strategic rhythms, which represent temporal patterns of ongoing strategic activities, is surging rapidly. The importance of rhythms has also been widely recognized for firms competing in dynamic environments. This is particularly relevant in the digital economy. The advances in digital technologies lead the world towards a new era of business by redefining firm interfaces with consumer, firm, and environment. Firms competing in the digital economy must deal with novel challenges, which impel firms to develop a new playbook of temporal rhythms. First, firms’ engagement with customers has transformed from discrete events to a continuous process, which require firms to develop new temporal strategies. Second, the digital environment is changing rapidly, moving beyond firms’ capabilities to keep up. Therefore, firms have to develop their own rhythms by selectively entraining to important environmental conditions. Third, firms competing in the digital economy thrive in an ecosystem, where their success is highly dependent on coordination with diverse partners. To align the timing of their strategic moves with multiple partners, they have to enact temporal rhythms on their partners. The challenges of the digital economy push firms to arrange strategic activities in a temporal rhythm Such unique aspects of digital economy require substantial advance of extant temporal frameworks in strategy, technology and entrepreneurship. Our panel aims at catalyzing the discussion on the intersection of temporal rhythms and emerging phenomenon of digital economy to explore some novel venues for extending current research in a digital context.