Extending digital ventures through templating

Jimmy Huang, Ola Henfridsson, Martin Liu

Research output: Journal PublicationArticlepeer-review

12 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Digital ventures typically face significant growth expectations. A common response is to extend the current operations into new areas through repurposing its digital core (e.g., search engine, data mining technique, platform, or voice interface). Grounded in prior literature, we surmise that the high versatility of the digital venture’s digital core facilitates such an extension by reducing cost and increasing speed. However, we know little about the process by which digital ventures draw on their digital core to extend current operations. To this end, we use Penrose’s work to analyze a two-year in-depth case study of a Chinese digital venture’s extension of its initial operations based on its credit rating technology. Our findings suggest that digital venture extension is facilitated by templating, which is a digitally enabled process of generating and using generic solutions across business areas. Through our grounded analysis, we unpack templating by tracing three processes contributing to digital venture extension: concepting, generalizing, and porting. Synthesizing our findings, we contribute to the emerging digital innovation and entrepreneurship literature by developing a process model of digital venture extension.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)285-310
Number of pages26
JournalInformation Systems Research
Volume33
Issue number1
Early online date30 Nov 2021
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Mar 2022

Keywords

  • Digital Innovation
  • Digital Entrepreneurship
  • Digital Ventures
  • Digital Technology
  • Firm Extension
  • Templating
  • Versatile Resources
  • Case Study
  • Scoping

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