The Innovation Agency: An Overview

Excerpt

The rise of digitalization is causing disruptive changes in business models in many industries and it is radically transforming how innovation should be understood and managed by scholars and practitioners [1]. New digital infrastructures (e.g. 3D printing, cloud computing), platforms (e.g. social media, virtual world) and ways of cooperation (e.g. co-design, co-production) are reshaping the meaning of innovation and introducing new challenges related to actors’ interaction within digital ecosystems. According to Nambisan et al. [1: 224], digital innovation is “the creation of (and consequent change in) market offerings, business processes, or models that result from the use of digital technology”. This broad definition introduces two specific features of digital innovation. The first is related to the flexibility offered by digital technology which is expanding the innovation phenomenon by not confining it anymore within the borders of an organization. This implies an increase in the fluidity of innovation process and also a continuous flux in which innovation outcomes may continue to evolve even after their delivery. The second feature concerns the potential for innovation agency to be distributed. It exploits the different actors which are actually involved into the innovation process (e.g. individuals, organizations, customers, policymakers), underlying the paradigms’ shift from the “good-dominant” to the “service-dominant” logic [2]. …