The Human Side of Digitizing the Innovation Process – Completed

The current digital transformation has profound consequences for companies. In this regard, the increasing digitization clearly is a driver of innovation on the industry or societal level. What has gone largely unnoticed so far, however, are the consequences digitization has for innovation processes in organizations and whether it facilitates or hampers innovation activities within them. In particular, the consequences for those people in organizations that actually are responsible for driving innovation projects and creating innovations, i.e., innovators, are still not well understood. Hence, there is a lack of understanding of the effects digitization has on the human side of innovation. Therefore, the primary aim of this research project is to examine which aspects of digitization are conducive or detrimental for innovation in organizations and to provide evidence based recommendations how management can minimize negative side effects of digitization on organizational innovation processes.