The maturation of digital objects in innovation projects: the role of interpersonal networks and team sharing atmosphere

Frantz Rowe, Dov Te’eni and Valéry Merminod

European Journal of Information Systems, 2023, vol. 32, issue 3, 434-461

Abstract: Innovation projects rely increasingly on digital objects as a means of developing and sharing knowledge within an organisation. The maturation of a digital object is important because only those objects that mature lead to actual products. There is, however, a catch 22. For objects to mature, they have to be shared; conversely, only mature objects tend to be shared. This interplay between the functional and social dimensions of object maturation and its role in product development has not been researched.Building on the relational view of objects, we theorise product development as an ensemble of myopic maturation processes of objects that recursively move between formal and informal networks in the organisation using sharing systems such as Product Lifecycle Management (PLM). Investigating patterns, i.e., sequences of events, in these maturation processes is a way to understand how firms overcome this catch 22 situation.We study four product innovation projects in a home appliances company, tracing the maturation and sharing processes of three types of digital objects, namely marketing specifications, technical specifications and virtual prototypes. We find that sharing – maturation patterns are affected by interpersonal networks and by team sharing atmosphere. We also find that sharing and object maturation interactions are coordinated informally through interpersonal networks and formally through PLM systems and stage-gate mechanisms.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/0960085X.2021.1967210 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:tjisxx:v:32:y:2023:i:3:p:434-461

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/tjis20

DOI: 10.1080/0960085X.2021.1967210

Access Statistics for this article

European Journal of Information Systems is currently edited by Par Agerfalk

More articles in European Journal of Information Systems from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().