Abstract
Innovation scholars and practitioners are discussing at length on the use of digital technologies in the innovation process of companies. Most of them have paid special attention on the use of digital technologies to deploy or evolve systems for managing the life cycle of products or services, accelerate their realization, and pursuing them to reach global markets in record times. Although the use of digital technologies is a widely discussed topic in literature, nowadays it seems to be even more relevant in the fields of management and innovation due to the important changes characterizing companies and their innovation activity. Indeed, companies are increasingly relying on knowledge and technology developed outside their borders, as well as transferring ideas to external partners, selling intellectual property, technology and licensing fees. In this case, the amount of knowledge and technology exchanged within and outside the boundaries of the firm increases significantly, that requires the use and implementation of new technologies. Accordingly, companies can use and implement digital technologies to manage an innovation process that is even more open. Notwithstanding, existing literature does not provide an innovation framework that highlights their key role in the innovation process. This paper aims to fill this gap. By adopting a capability-based perspective to identify the patterns of actions that firms have to deploy to use and implement a set of digital technologies in their innovation process, the paper provides a map of enabled and enabling capabilities ensuing from and required for their use and implementation. From a methodological point of view, we conducted an exploratory multiple case study analysis, which involved a sample of eight companies operating in different industries and characterized by different sizes, market shares and organizational structure.