Building Digital Products: Understanding the interaction between hardware and software component development during digital innovation

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Jan Recker, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Data Management, Data-Intensive Systems, Computer Science Methods in Business Informatics ; Accounting and Finance
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 453416399

Many emergent digital products, such as voice-enabled home appliances, semi-autonomous robots, or 3D printers, have in common that their development requires both innovative software components and innovative hardware components. Creating such digital product innovations thus requires managing software development, hardware engineering, and the interaction between these two. Existing research on digital innovation and product development has so far neglected how software and hardware components interact, and how such interaction shapes digital product innovation processes – the literature almost exclusively has focused on the software side of digital objects only. Scholars have drawn a clear line between software and hardware components of digital innovations, where the former is “fungible, ephemeral, and indeterministic”, and the latter is “rigid, stable, and tangible”. Most work on digital innovation analytically separates software from hardware, treats hardware as an empirical context (a “vessel”) for software-based digital innovations, or neglects hardware altogether.This view is problematic. Digital technologies, specifically hardware components, have become increasingly integral and pertinent to new product development. If we continue to isolate software from hardware, and treat hardware as a mere vessel for digital innovation, we risk misrepresenting the many product innovations that are digitally-enabled, yet incorporate both ephemeral (software) and physical (hardware) components, often to the point that a clear identity as either hardware or software cannot be established. Our hypothesis is that a complete understanding digital product innovation must include the actual and possible interactions between software and hardware innovations in the modular architecture of digital technologies. Our aim is to challenge current literature assumptions and unpack the process of innovating digital products, which requires taking the interaction of both component domains seriously. We ask: ‘how do interactions between the development of software and hardware components influence the process and outcomes of digital product innovation?’ To address this research question, we propose a longitudinal, in-depth revelatory case study of a globally known digital product innovation that decisively features both hardware and software innovations: the development of 3D printing systems. Our goal is to inductively develop a new, empirically grounded theoretical framework explaining digital product innovation, which explicitly considers the development of, and interactions between, both hardware and software components.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Netherlands, USA
• Co-Investigators: Professor Dr. Jens Pöppelbuß; Dr. Karl Werder
• Cooperation Partners: Professor Dr. Jan Bosch; Professor Dr. Julian Lehmann; Professor Dr. Youngjin Yoo, Ph.D.