Role of Digitisation in Enabling Co-creation of Value in KIBS Firms

Résumé En

The affordability, reliability, access and mass adoption of information and communication technological advances is a key trigger to digitisation. Digitisation significantly influences the global economy, as it impacts interpersonal and organisational relationships, disrupts organisational practices, and enables innovation. Digitization is transforming a firm’s interaction with its external partners (including users), through the use of digitally-enabled business processes, online chats, digital services, online tools/applications and automated systems. This paper focuses on the role of digitisation in innovation in services, because services account for a significant proportion of GDP and employment in developed economies. In specific, the paper explores the topic in the context of Knowledge-Intensive Business Service (KIBS) firms (that exhibit high levels of innovations as users, producers and diffusers of innovation). This conceptual paper explores how KIBS firms can maximise the value extracted from external knowledge/collaboration through digitisation (since KIBS firms demonstrate the highest degree of adoption of digital technologies) to enhance process innovation outcomes. Process innovation is chosen because it plays a fundamental role in delivering efficiency and market share. This paper proposes that digitisation will moderate the relationship between collaboration (breadth of external partners and depth of user engagement) and internal resource commitment to enhance the benefits derived from process innovation.