André Hanelt

University of Kassel · Chair of Digital Transformation Management

The paper looks at Digital Innovation Units (DIUs), which are essential for deliver new digital technology-related skills and working procedures to their main organisations. In this context, the paper examines how DIUs can master their continuous struggle for survival and growth. To better understand the evolution of DIUs, the paper dentifies three...

Aspiring to close capability gaps for digital innovation, industrial-age incumbents often decide to establish Digital Innovation Units (DIUs), which are separated from the main organization both geographically and with regard to their techniques, skills and working styles. This separation is problematic as digital innovation in these contexts is ab...

Digital applications in health care are a concurrent research and management question, where implementation experiences are a core field of information systems research. It also contributes to fighting pandemic crises like COVID-19 because contactless information flow and speed of diagnostics are improved. This paper presents three digital applicat...

Digital innovation is both a necessary and a challenging endeavor for most firms. To achieve progress in this regard, firms across contexts increasingly set up digital innovation units (DIUs). Despite its popularity in practice, the prospects of this initiative are to date unclear. Building upon dynamic capabilities theory, we hypothesize the perfo...

The increasingly digital business landscape has created manifold novel opportunities as well as threats to traditional business models. In consequence, a broad variety of digital business models emerged. Powerful tools and managerial guidance on how to shape digital strategies in this volatile and uncertain terrain are sought-after, but remain rare...

With business ecosystems digitalizing by the force of digital innovation, the deployment of boundary resources (such as application programming interfaces: APIs) becomes a strategic option across contexts. We distinguish between boundary resources that provide access openness and those that provide resource openness, and theorize the antecedents an...

Digital innovation enables new forms of cyber-physical innovation based on digital business ecosystems. However, the realization of the opportunities arising from such innovation substantially hinges on interoperability, that is, the ability of two or more systems to exchange information and understand that exchanged information. While interoperabi...

Organizations need to develop digital competences to utilize digital technologies to succeed in digital transformation. Yet, current efforts on organizational strategies to develop digital competences, i.e., digital M&A or appointing a CDO, have been conducted in isolation. However, following digital ecodynamics, material, organizational and enviro...

Proliferating digitalization affects the evolution of business models across contexts and challenges firms’ established innovation trajectories. Prior work on organizational path dependence suggests that firms experience decreasing option spaces over time and ultimately arrive at lock-in situations that prevent them from reacting to changing enviro...

On their journey toward digital transformation, industrial firms need to embrace digital innovation. The top management team (TMT) is expected to set the course for digital innovation, which is a challenging endeavour given the novel and cross-functional nature of digital innovation. We draw on role theory to make sense of emerging role requirement...

In the course of digitalization, fundamental mechanisms according to which companies operate are changing. Companies are forced to develop new, digital capabilities, which in turn, alter a company’s set of competitive moves and thus its business strategy. While much effort is undertaken to examine digital business strategy through several theoretic...

While digital business strategy (DBS) has recently garnered substantial attention, there is still little understanding about different strategy alternatives and their outcomes. However, this is of great importance as different digital business strategy types may utilize different profit mechanisms and thus influence a companies’ performance in diff...

Through the increasing diffusion of digital technology, also traditional areas such as the automotive context are expected to implement digital innovation. In these established ecosystems, demands for new digital capabilities increase, which could potentially be satisfied by actors from the IT ecosystem. However, it is unclear, which of these actor...

Widespread digitalization across societies is rendering digital connectedness relevant for more and more individuals. Being connected is not merely seen as something individuals do – it has become part of their personality. Furthermore, individuals have built personal digital ecosystems in recent years, i.e., assemblages of heterogeneous digital te...

Digital transformation poses unprecedented questions about the interaction of information systems and organizational forms. While valuable knowledge has been created about organizational forms in general and, more specifically, about the relation between specific information systems and particular organizational forms, a longitudinal and holistic a...

By appointing a chief digital officer (CDO), firms decide for a central role responsible for their digital transformation. While CDOs have recently appeared in the C‐suites of firms across the globe, the current literature lacks insights into the specific antecedents of CDO presence. Grounded in the peculiarities of the digital age, we provide theo...

In the course of digitalization, fundamental mechanisms according to which companies operate are changing. Companies are forced to develop new, digital capabilities, which in turn, alter a company’s set of competitive moves and thus business strategy. While much effort is undertaken to examine digital business strategy through several theoretical l...

While digital business strategy has recently garnered substantial attention, there is still little understanding about different strategy alternatives and their outcomes. However, this is of great importance as different digital business strategy types may utilize different profit mechanisms and thus influence a companies’ performance in different...

While multiple mechanisms for value creation from big data analytics (BDA) exist, their application in everyday life can create trade-offs, particularly in the context of service robotics where the dispersion of autonomous digital technologies creates potentials for data-driven efficiency gains. Attending to personal preferences in such contexts, i...

In this article we provide a systematic review of the extensive yet diverse and fragmented literature on digital transformation (DT), with the goal of clarifying boundary conditions to investigate the phenomenon from the perspective of organizational change. On the basis of 279 articles, we provide a multi‐dimensional framework synthesizing what is...

Increased data availability and computing power allows businesses across industries to employ AI technologies in their products and processes. Yet, leveraging AI effectively requires high investments. To reduce these investments, companies can implement AI capabilities directly via boundary resources such as application programming interfaces (APIs...

Digital technologies are increasingly responsible for creating new digital environments and reshaping existing contexts. As a consequence of this pervasive digitalization, we witness the emergence of ecosystems, encompassing a variety of dispersed actors. Although research is dealing with the characterization of ecosystem roles in general, there is...

While digital innovation becomes increasingly important for business success, the role of firms’ internal IT functions in digital innovation is unclear. Most IT functions come from institutionalized service provider roles, unfit to contribute significantly to digital innovation which requires organizing logics that emphasize speed, flexibility, and...

Digital platform ecosystems have recently risen in relevance and popularity. With the diffusion of technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), born digital actors as well as traditional “pipeline firms” engage in platform ecosystems. This study explores the challenges perceived by industrial-age firms when building a platform ecosystem for t...

Aiming to support digital innovation endeavours, industrial-age companies increasingly acquire firms that heavily build upon digital technologies. Related research has raised serious concerns regarding the prospects of such plans, yet has not focused the particular context of digital mergers and acquisitions (M&A). Drawing on a knowledge-based pers...

Digitally enabled two-sided platforms rely on mediating different actors to evoke transactions. Here, the core value-generating mechanisms of these platforms relate to the recommendations that persuade users to make future transactions, thereby driving sales, customer satisfaction, efficiency, and trust. To generate effective recommendations, accur...

An extensive penetration of digital technologies and a myriad of connected devices, people, and organizations have led to a world more interdependent than ever. Powerful companies such as Amazon, Facebook, Apple etc. exemplify the potential to harness widespread innovation from countless actors, including consumers and developers, via the power of...

By appointing a chief digital officer (CDO), firms decide for a distinct and central responsibility for the digital transformation of their firm. While the CDO has recently spread into the C-suite of firms across the globe, current literature lacks insights on the antecedents and performance effects of CDO appointments. Grounded in the peculiaritie...

In the age of digitalization, incumbent firms are forced to compete with newborn digital ventures in novel spaces. Both digital entrants as well as industrial-age incumbents enter this emerging competition from different starting points: incumbents are known to be restrained by their cognitive and material path dependence to innovate, and new entra...

A wide range of Internet of Things platform providers operate diverse business models to cater for the manifold requirements of the IoT. This paper contributes to a more precise understanding of IoT platforms as an essential building block of the IoT based on the characteristics of its business models. Even though research listing technological dim...

Companies are more frequently seen shifting their focus from technological innovation towards business model innovation. One efficient option for business model innovation is to learn from existing solutions, i.e., business model patterns. However, the various understandings of the business model pattern concept are often confusing and contradictor...

An extensive penetration of digital technologies and a myriad of connected devices, people, and organizations have led to a world more interdependent than ever. Powerful companies such as Amazon, Facebook, Apple etc. exemplify the potential to harness widespread innovation from countless actors, including consumers and developers, via the power of...

Despite the growing relevance of IT for business success, IT departments have largely remained in an outsider role associated with low status and power. However, changes in the external environment resulting from ongoing digitalization heighten the relevance of resources, capabilities, and knowledge residing within corporate IT. By combining instit...

Organizations from nearly every industry face critical challenges of organizing for successful digital innovation. While the notion of digital innovation management has received increasing interest, prior IS research has offered limited insights into the effectiveness of specific organizing structures and mechanisms, such as the allocation of decis...

The quest for creating smart and sustainable cities entails various substantial challenges, such as environmental degradation and a shortage of space. To negotiate these hurdles, innovative approaches must be implemented. A key aspect in this regard is the shared use of resources via forms of access-based consumption. Owing to advances in the digit...

Although researchers have uncovered potential positive impacts of digital technologies in healthcare and medical centers have been increasingly making use of technology to digitally store their data, the use of healthcare analytics in clinical practice remains limited. In particular, the application of machine learning (ML) approaches, although hol...

Pervasive digitalization substantially influences how contemporary firms interact with their business environments. Increasing connectivity of firms, things, and people lead to more complex interrelations, rendering an ecosystem perspective relevant. Accordingly, research increasingly points to the value of the ecosystem construct for explaining th...

The diffusion of new digital technologies renders digital transformation relevant for nearly every industry. Therefore, the maturity of firms in mastering this fundamental organizational change is increasingly discussed in practice-oriented literature. These studies, however, suffer from some shortcomings. Most importantly, digital maturity is typi...

Carsharing clubs that grant members temporary access to vehicles have existed for more than half a century. Only recently, however, have technological advances such as the mobile internet begun to foster new carsharing business models, thereby increasing the attractiveness of carsharing for both operators and users. So far, these new business model...

The process of Datafication gives rise to ubiquitousness of data. Data-driven approaches may create meaningful insights from the vast volumes of data available to businesses. However, coping with the great volume and variety of data requires improved data analysis methods. Many such methods are dependent on a user's subjective domain knowledge. Thi...

Purpose: This paper provides managers from traditional industries with a blueprint to systematically analyze and discover digital business models and thus better cope with the digital transformation of their industrial businesses. Methodology: The proposed blueprint is built on state-of-the-art research on digital business model innovation and a r...

The purpose of this app is to provide entrepreneurs access to one of the most powerful tools for business model innovation: business model patterns. The Business Model Pattern Database is the world’s most exhaustive collection of business model patterns. Each pattern describes a success-proven option for business model innovation from the past. Exa...

Carsharing clubs that grant members temporary access to vehicles have existed for more than half a century. Only recently, however, have advances in digital technologies such as the mobile Internet begun to foster new carsharing business models, thereby increasing the attractiveness of carsharing for both operators and users. Thus far, these new bu...

The pervasive diffusion of digital technologies affords the development of innovative and sustainable business models. With increased connectivity, options arise for enabling sharing-based services with pay-per-use pricing. Besides the merits that these services gather, e.g., concerning sustainability, flexibility and economics, less is known about...

Information systems (IS) can foster business transformation toward sustainability on a large scale by supporting green technologies, thereby creating hybrid physical–digital solutions that are able to fulfil organizational performance requirements and contribute to sustainable business practices. These supporting IS provide an alternative path to c...

Recent technological advances have enabled several new digital business models, which are now transforming industrial-age industries. As the mobility sector is particularly suitable for studying characteristics of this recent digital transformation, prior research has investigated how individual companies from this sector, such as automotive manufa...

The increasing popularity of Software as a Service has strongly affected the established business model of on-premise enterprise software. Software as a Service has distinctive characteristics of disruptive innovations that typically create several difficulties for incumbent firms, in particular with regard to adapting business models. To date, how...

In the 1990s, the broad diffusion of the internet allowed firms such as Amazon, eBay, and Google to invent new digital business models. Since then, research has formalized recurring configurations as digital business model types, still frequently being used to analyze existing business models and develop new ones. Now, the next wave of digital tran...

Companies are more frequently seen shifting their focus from technological innovation towards business model innovation. One efficient option for business model innovation is to learn from existing solutions, i.e., business model patterns. However, the various understandings of the business model pattern concept are often confusing and contradictor...

The increasing diffusion of digital technologies throughout industries and aspects of life is transforming businesses even in areas that always have been dependent on physical materiality. In this paper, by conducting an exploratory Delphi study in collaboration with 19 industry experts, we aim to shed light on the specific managerial challenges as...

Digital technologies have reached the sphere of industrial-age, primarily physical industries, thus forcing incumbent firms to digitally innovate their business models. Employing a longitudinal dataset of the world’s largest automobile manufacturers from 2000 to 2013, we found empirical evidence of a positive effect of digital technology–related me...

Wissenschaftliche Disziplinen müssen sich ständig fragen, was ihr Beitrag zu bedeutenden und aktuellen gesellschaftlichen Themen ist, um ihre Relevanz und Legitimität unter Beweis zu stellen. Eine der derzeit wesentlichsten Herausforderungen moderner Gesellschaften ist das Thema der ökologischen Nachhaltigkeit. Ressourcenknappheit und Umweltverschm...