Scaling Digital Innovation’s Generativity to Re-Invent Organisational Capabilities

Abstract

As firms in the Schumpeterian environment of creative destruction seek to creatively edge out each other, frequent organisational capabilities’ re-invention tends to be a critical prerequisite for unlocking new capabilities to catalyse a business’ sustainability. Given the growing importance of self-disruption as an antecedent for organisational re-invention, this empirical research explores whether improved level of the optimisation of digital innovation’s generativity would leverage organisational capabilities’ re-invention to counter threats in the constantly changing Schumpeterian environment of creative destruction. Using a qualitative research method, the empirical research explored the opinions of twenty-five personnel that constituted of IT and electronics engineering personnel from five innovative IT and digitally abreast organisations in Glasgow-Scotland. The Delphi method that was accomplished in five sequential focus group discussions explored the impact of the emerging digital innovation technologies not only on new digital product or service innovations, but also on organisational capabilities’ re-invention. Although novel service and retail models as well as novel marketing approaches were found to emerge from the utilisation of different digital innovation technologies, major inhibitors of the optimisation of digital innovation’s generativity were still found to arise from deeply embedded analog business systems or the paradox of having to digitize and respond to the needs of the yet largely analog-skewed market. To address such a challenge, this study proposes a digital organisational capabilities’ re-invention model to agitate the need for most businesses to adopt digital business approaches as antecedents for leveraging the optimisation of digital innovation’s generativity. This will not only aid the creation of new products or services, but also re-invention of new capabilities to bolster a firm’s competitive edge. However, future research can still explore skills and competencies that are critical for digital innovation’s optimisation.