Knowledge Creation for Digital Innovation in Malaysia: Practitioners’ Standpoint

Abstract

Background: Malaysia established the National Industry 4.0 strategy (NI4.0) in 2018 to aid the country’s industries in adopting modern technologies to increase productivity and competitiveness. The purpose of NI4.0 is to increase enterprises’ intelligence capabilities as smart manufacturers in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), who employ data and information across the whole enactment process. As a result, high-technology adoption in NI4.0 is expected to improve knowledge creation (KC) in the Information Technology (IT) business. Recent NI4.0 breakthroughs have permitted new types of borderless projects, thereby, increasing the complexity and unpredictability of IT projects while simultaneously providing a multitude of new knowledge. However, the understanding of contemporary practice difficulties in IT projects and the knowledge creation phenomena is limited. Method: This study is exploratory in nature with a generic qualitative research method. Ten selected key IT project managers were interviewed to understand the current challenges confronting IT projects in Malaysia to build practice-oriented problem statements and to provide relevance leading to a research framework for knowledge creation impacting digital innovation. Interview data were systematically analysed using the NVivo software tool. Results: Practitioners’ reflected that a transactive memory system, IT support and T-shaped skills are current challenges in Malaysian IT projects. This is consistent with the literature. Conclusions: This practice review benefits Malaysia’s public and commercial sectors by confirming that the literature is coherent with practice by providing insights that may warrant further research in this field.