Digital Innovation Strategy: A Framework for Diagnosing and Improving Digital Product and Service Innovation

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and integrated one becoming more and more complex. If the companies or firms want to sustain in this ever changing digital environment they need to be up to date with recent technological development as well as analyze the process of digital technology and associated usage pattern, which can be done through gathering intelligence on which new hardware devices are on their way to market, including components such as memory, processors, and chips, and devices such as PCs, smartphones, and tablets. Also, digital technology has opened up a new era of sales and distribution channels. Firms can now position and integrate their products and services with an abundance of mobile operating systems, social media sites, and app stores. In short, digital technology has opened up a new trend of users adapting to new experiences. Facebook is currently a key actor for many firms that utilize the platform to a varying degree, ranging from small businesses that push information out to their customers, to large players like Skype and Spotify that instead utilize Facebook to pull new customers in through formalized Facebook partnerships materialized in integrated user accounts.

4. Skills

The essence of any technology or any firm to survive is to acquire new and latest skills. Digital innovation requires new skills without making all existing skills obsolete. Digital innovation involves continuous learning whereby new digital technologies are explored in order to create an understanding of their unique properties. This can involve establishing conditions for retraining and incentives for existing staff to acquire digital skills. The firms have many options to innovate new technology, the firms can do that by either getting their employees trained continuously in new skills or they can hire skilled people from outside.

5. Improvisation

Improvisation stands for valuable changes in organization. Innovation should be welcomed in any organization by any employee or outsider. The firms should dedicate some time on improvising as this is one of the way how firms can get ahead from others in this technologically changing environment. Allocating time for improvisation is the key. In digital innovation, improvisational efforts typically occur across different units, levels, and divisions of the firm. Firms should establish mechanisms for capturing the successful outcomes of such efforts. Also, in order to deal with overlaps and waste, coordination is a key measure.