Digital tools can be an enabler for automotive startups to strengthen their digital innovation capability. Still, few empirical studies describe how automotive startups apply digital tools to do this. Digital innovation capability is essential for survival in a volatile global digital marketplace. Therefore, we conducted a qualitative study based on 23 interviews with nine global automotive startups to understand how they apply digital tools to strengthen their digital innovation. The results showed that automotive startups use cloud services almost exclusively for their business. We conclude that startups choose to use digital tools as SaaS to strengthen their organizational agility and digital innovation initiatives. It harmonizes with their agile culture, effectively enabling innovation collaborations between employees internally and with external actors enabling rapidness to market. SaaS providers' startup programs enabled startups to remain focused on their innovation initiatives and not worry about scalability since the solutions scaled from the start. © 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

In a global digital market, startups must have the capability to handle apprehension of knowledge and utilization of knowledge efficiently to quickly adapt to new realities as these emerge, given their limited resources—this regardless of whether it is customer needs or other events that affect the market. However, we do not know how startups quickly change course and adapt to stay competitive in the market. Therefore, we conducted a qualitative study based on 23 interviews with nine globally active automotive startups to understand startups' fast adaptability and how it impacts their digital innovation capability. The results show that startups with an organizational agility capability efficiently handle the transition between all four stages of innovative thinking. We conclude that dealing simultaneously with a problem from several different perspectives accelerates the apprehension of knowledge through concrete experience and abstract thinking; experimenting with new solutions develops new insights and knowledge.

An increasingly digital world requires organizations to act more agilely, to succeed in responding quickly when changes or new opportunities arise. The increased digitalization creates a need for organizations to develop an ability to quickly deliver digital innovation, with quality to meet changing customer needs over time. This need for agility to support innovation has aroused interest among information systems researchers in recent years. Two different research streams on agility exist, with the following perspectives: organizational agility concerning IT strategies and operations for organizational cost efficiency; and agile methods in software development, to achieve continuous rapid delivery of digital solutions that meet customer needs. The current information systems literature on organizational agility covers only the first-mentioned perspective, leaving a knowledge gap. To fill the gap we must have a broader understanding of how organizational agility relates to achieving high-paced digital innovation capability.

This thesis intends to broaden our understanding of how organizational agility impacts digital innovation by reporting my studies of startups in the automotive industry. The reasons for studying automotive startups are twofold: (a) media reports have indicated that startups generally seem be successful at high-paced digital innovation despite limited means, and (b) some of these startups have begun to challenge automotive incumbents. This aroused an interest in better understanding how startups achieve this ability, and whether there are any lessons that are transferable to incumbents. Therefore this thesis contributes to a broader perspective of organizational agility by addressing the research question: How do startups use organizational agility to drive digital innovation?

Results from the research show that not all startups possess equal abilities in terms of organizational agility for digital innovation. This research has identified nine organizational agility capabilities, which form four organizational agility readiness patterns impacting digital innovation.

This research provides a theoretical contribution to organizational agility by showing that an amalgamation of two research streams in the information systems literature is needed to achieve a more holistic approach. This approach is needed as the role of IT has changed, from a primary focus on supporting organizational efficiency and cost savings to today, when IT plays a vital strategic role through digital innovation. The two information systems research streams concerning agility are: a) IT strategies and operations supporting organizational efficiency, and b) software development as an innovation outcome. Currently, the information systems research on organizational agility primarily covers only how agility relates to the IT role of supporting efficiency. This research argues that a broader perspective on organizational agility is needed, to understand better which organizational agility capabilities impact digital innovation and how they impact it.

The empirical contribution is the identification of nine organizational agility capabilities, which form four organizational agility patterns that affect digital innovation capability to varying degrees. It is crucial that organizations be knowledgable about these nine organizational agility capabilities, since how they manage them will result in different digital innovation capabilities. The contribution to practice is the conceptual framework of four agility readiness patterns for digital innovation. These can be used to evaluate organizations' current digital innovation capability, and guide them as to which capabilities they may need to improve if they want to develop another level of digital innovation capability. The nine organizational agility capabilities identified in this research represent a minimum set that an organization needs to manage knowledgeably, in order to become an agile enterprise for digital innovation.

Purpose: The digitization process has increased the pressure on large firms to transform. However, current frameworks on digital transformation are not well explaining what factors contribute to, or hinder, a firm’s digital transformation. Innovation diffusion theories could complement existing frameworks, and for this reason, the purpose of this paper is to expand the existing body of knowledge on what contributes to, or hinders, an industrial firm’s digital transformation by applying a validated framework based on innovation diffusion theories on two pioneer cases: General Electric and Siemens EHR/Health Services. Design/methodology/approach: The framework used in this paper is based on several years’ empirical studies and iterative literature reviews on innovation diffusion theories. Further, each use case is based on literature reviews and unique empirical data, collected by the authors of this paper as a result of taking active part of respective company’s multi-years transformation. Findings: Common drivers of, and clear inhibitors to the two firms’ transformation, were identified. The innovation diffusion framework was found to work very well in identifying those factors. Research limitations/implications: The implications are that researchers better can analyze/explain a digital transformation of a firm, and business managers can better plan or improve their firms’ transformation processes. Originality/value: The theoretical contributions of this paper are two: first, complement existing frameworks with a validated framework for innovation diffusion; second, provide an extension of our body of knowledge on factors that contributes to, or hinders, industrial firm’s digital transformation. © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Co-creation is an essential aspect of organizational agility enabling organizations to gain digital in- novation capabilities, such as support in developing critical peripheral services or attracting talents and investors. Co-creation is especially essential for startups because of their limited resources. It fosters organizations to learn and innovate across company boundaries to remain competitive. Little is known about how startups apply co-creation to support their digital innovation initiatives. This paper presents a qualitative study of eight automotive startups, based on 22 semi-structured interviews. We applied the prediction and control framework as an analytic lens and identified three key advantages of co-creation. Embracing co-creation in ecosystems increases startups' resource capacity and speed for digital innovation. We concluded that automotive startups that apply visionary and transformative logic were found to have a better ability to lead digital innovation in a controlled way and attract wanted talents and actors.

Organizational transparency has been identified as an essential principle for organizations to adopt since it enables organizational agility and digital innovation capability, which have become crucial for companies to handle today's volatile digital market. Startups seem to embrace transparency, but there is little empirical evidence in the literature describing how startups use transparency to develop their organizational agility and increase their digital innovation capability. We conducted a qualitative study based on 23 semi-structured interviews on nine globally active automotive startups to understand how organizational transparency strengthens digital innovation capability. The result shows that in the cases where transparency enables trusting relationships and commitment between employees and across company borders, transparency can strengthen the startups' digital innovation capability and making more use of people's creativity. We conclude that startups that apply an external transparency strategy to open innovation can enhance their digital innovation pace and the likelihood of market success.

Existing research on organizational agility has primarily focused on large com- panies. This research tends to reference startups as the truly agile organizations, and it is assumed that large established corporations have much to learn from startups, especially for digital innovation. However, little research has studied startups with an organizational agility lens to identify how startups develop organizational agility and what enables and hinders such agility. There is a need to better understand how startups use organizational agility to gain leverage in digital innovation.

This licentiate thesis is based on three papers, where each paper focuses on one aspect of organizational agility, and aims to answer the research question: How do startups use organizational agility to gain leverage in digital innovation?

A qualitative approach was applied, and two interview studies were conducted in the automotive products and services domain. This domain was chosen be- cause it has recently been challenged by newcomers with very different strategies for innovation and the automotive incumbents are now struggling to transform into agile enterprises. Subsequently, it became possible to identify differences in how organizational agility is applied in digital innovation in large companies and startups. The first study included three incumbents and two in- ternational startups, and the second study included nine startups. The startups included in the two studies were located in Sweden and one startup in the USA (active in Sweden). 23 semi-structured interviews were conducted, which en- abled us to gain a richer and more in-depth understanding about how startups develop and applied organizational agility in their digital innovation initiatives. An initial literary study helped identify core dimensions of organizational agil- ity that were empirically investigated. Organizational agility as an analytic lens was operationalized using different frameworks to support our analysis work.

The concluding analysis showed differences between startups' ability to use organizational agility in digital innovation. The startups had different ap- proaches to digital innovation and the analysis shows different types of organ- izational agility. The startups that applied an agile culture, visionary and trans- formative approach (effectuation logic) and open innovation, were the most successful when it came to keeping a high digital innovation pace compared with the other startups in this study. Based on the analysis of how organization-Page 2 of 167al agility affected the studied companies' digital innovation capability, we iden- tified four ideal types of startup organizational agility: digital industrial, digital complementary, digital exploiter, and digital disrupter. In Digital industrial, the value of organizational agility is less exploited because it applies a planning approach and a unilateral technical focus with a vague business model, leading to a low digital innovation capability. In Digital complementary, the value of organizational agility is utilized while applying a planning approach, focusing on in-depth technical research where the value, once integrated into a customer product, can lead to a high digital innovation capability. In Digital exploiter, the value of organizational agility is fully utilized while applying a visionary and adaptive approach, focusing on the rapid exploitation of market-driven digital services applied but can lead to low digital innovation capability. In Digital disrupter, the value of organizational agility is optimally utilized by using a visionary and transformative strategy, focusing on in-depth and rapid explora- tion in innovation ecosystems or networks, which leads to high digital innova- tion capability.

The research contributes to practice and the theory of organizational agility by showing how the various aspects of organizational agility impact the organiza- tions' digital innovation capability.

The purpose of this study is to understand how the cultural aspects of organizational agility affect digital innovation capability. In the context of increasing demand for fast-paced digital innovation, organizational agility becomes strategically crucial for large incumbent companies to increase their competitiveness. The literature on organizational agility shows that incumbents, with their vast access to resources, still can have limited ability to innovate and respond to change. This is in sharp contrast to startups, who sometimes are impressively innovative despite their very limited resources. Sometimes the incumbents are even outcompeted and disrupted by startups because of their ability to embrace change, and rapidly seize new business opportunities. However, we know little about why some incumbents are not able to use their resources efficiently for digital innovation and why some smaller startups can transcend these resource limitations. In this context, we find that cultural aspects are especially crucial as enablers for organizational agility in digital innovation. We designed a comparative study to investigate the differences in the influence of culture on organizational agility; and how it hinders or enables digital innovation, at both incumbent firms and startups in the automotive industry. We applied a qualitative research approach and selected semi-structured interviews as our main research method. The Competing Values Framework was used as a tool to categorize different cultures that affect organizational agility, but also to identify how and when tensions between values supported or hampered the organizations’ ability to innovate. Our findings show that, while a blend of Hierarchy and Market cultures inhibited the innovation capability, Clan and Adhocracy cultures promoted innovation. In our sample, the incumbents predominantly adhered to the first two cultures, while the startups typically belonged to the second group. The most successful startups were even able to create a combination of Clan and Adhocracy cultures — a concept we here term ‘Agile culture.’ This culture allowed them to reach a beneficial state of digital innovation growth. When it comes to the implications for research and practice, we found the need to analyze the role of culture for organizational agility; and how to utilize culture as an asset to enable digital innovation growth. One contribution is the identification of ‘Agile culture’ that is an amalgamation of Clan and Adhocracy culture. The value agile culture creates when applied, enables organizational agility, which can enhance digital innovation capability.

Celem tego badania jest pogłębienie wiedzy dotyczącej tego, w jaki sposób kulturowe aspekty zwinności organizacyjnej wpływają na zdolność do generowania innowacji cyfrowych. W kontekście rosnącego zapotrzebowania na szybko rozwijające się innowacje cyfrowe, zwinność organizacyjna staje się strategicznie kluczowa dla dużych firm, aby zwiększyć ich konkurencyjność. Literatura na temat sprawności i zwinności organizacyjnej jednoznacznie wskazuje, że obecnie nawet organizacje szerokim dostępem do zasobów, wciąż mogą mieć ograniczone możliwości wprowadzania innowacji i reagowania na zmiany. Sytuacja organizacji dojrzałych istotnie kontrastuje z sytuacją startupów, które bywają imponująco innowacyjne mimo bardzo ograniczonych zasobów. Czasami firmy zajmujące ugruntowaną pozycję rynkową są deklasowane przez startupy ze względu na ich olbrzymią zdolność do wdrażania zmian i szybkiego wykorzystywania nowych możliwości biznesowych. Jednak brakuje wiedzy o tym, dlaczego niektórzy obecni operatorzy rynkowi nie są w stanie efektywnie wykorzystywać swoich zasobów do wdrażania innowacji cyfrowych i dlaczego niektóre mniejsze startupy mogą swobodnie te ograniczenia zasobów przekraczać. Autorzy uważają, że na tą sytuację mają wpływ czynniki kulturowe. Aby zweryfikować to założenie, zaprojektowali badanie porównawcze dot. wpływu kultury na sprawność organizacji w firmach dużych (wieloletnich), jak i startupach z branży motoryzacyjnej. Zastosowali oni jakościowe podejście badawcze w oparciu o wywiady częściowo ustrukturyzowane. Ramy konkurujących wartości organizacyjnych zostały wykorzystane jako narzędzie do kategoryzacji różnych kultur, które wpływają na sprawność organizacji, ale także do określenia, w jaki sposób i kiedy napięcia między wartościami wspierały lub utrudniały zdolność organizacji do innowacji. Nasze odkrycia pokazują, że podczas gdy mieszanka kultur hierarchii i rynku hamowała zdolność do innowacji, kultury klanowe i adhokracyjne promowały innowacje. W badanej próbie wieloletnie firmy przeważnie należały do dwóch pierwszych kultur, podczas gdy startupy zazwyczaj należały do drugiej grupy. Zaobserwowano, iż startupy odnoszące największe sukcesy we wdrażaniu innowacji były w stanie stworzyć kombinację kultur klanowych i ad-hokracji, którą autorzy nazywali „kulturą zwinną”. Ta kultura pozwoliła im osiągnąć korzystny stan wzrostu innowacji cyfrowych. Autorzy sformułowali również implikacje badawcze i rekomendacje praktyczne, stwierdzili potrzebę dalszego, głębszego przeanalizowania znaczenia elementów kultury zwinnej dla sprawności organizacyjnej; oraz zaznaczyli konieczność dalszej eksploracji wątku dot. tego jak wykorzystać kulturę jako atut umożliwiający rozwój innowacji cyfrowych. Oryginalność przedstawionych wyników polega na identyfikacji „kultury zwinnej”, która jest połączeniem kultury klanowej i adhokracji. Kultura zwinna, a konkretnie wartość, którą ona tworzy, gdy jest stosowana, umożliwia sprawne wdrażanie innowacji cyfrowych.

Organizational agility, a firm’s ability to manage dynamic change, has become strategically important for companies in their innovation work. In this context cultural aspects are especially important, as they can both support and hamper organizational agility. Differences can generate innovation ability but they can also create conflicts between competing value systems, thus reducing the firm’s ability to develop organizational agility to support innovation processes. We conducted a comparative study in incumbent firms and startups in the automotive industry to identify the influence of entrepreneurial cultural values on organizational agility. The Competing Values Framework was applied to identify the relationship between cultural values and organizational agility. The result shows that cultural differences affect the companies ability to develop organizational agility for innovation work. In particular incumbents struggled to enable a change towards organizational agility. We found that startups integrated Clan and Adhocracy into an agile culture, which enabled continuous innovation growth.