A socio-cognitive perspective of knowledge integration in digital innovation networks

Abstract

Digital innovation is a complex process in which actors seek to create new value pathways by combining digital resources in a layered modular architecture. While IS scholarship has a rich tradition of research on developing and implementing digital artefacts within intra-organisational contexts, our understanding of knowledge integration across distributed innovation networks is nascent and under-theorised. This is an important area of research given the rising importance of digital innovation networks and the challenges faced in integrating specialised knowledge, especially given the greater diversity, speed, reach, and scope made possible by digital technologies. Drawing on in-depth case study findings from a health IoT project involving multiple organisations and disciplines, we explore how knowledge is integrated across boundaries during the initiation stage of a digital innovation network. Our findings point to boundaries related to the digital platform’s organising vision, resource allocation, delivery roadmap, technical architecture, and intellectual property, to name but a few challenges. We then reveal five socio-cognitive modes of knowledge integration which actors strategically enact to cross syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic boundaries: Signalling, Assembling, Contesting, Discounting, and Finalising. The choice of mode depends on the perceived knowledge status (‘what they know’) and social status (‘who they are’) of network actors, which highlight the salience of both social and cognitive dependencies for knowledge integration. We further discuss the contribution of design objects for overcoming differences and distinctions between specialist actors in a digital innovation network.