A key issue in many organizations is how to disseminate information in an effective way and, more importantly, how to make use of this information in order to create new knowledge. One way of addressing this problem is to focus on how information is socially transformed into knowledge. This includes how knowledge is handled in practice and how the knowledge produced is qualified as being something worth knowing and acting upon. Two well-established practices for doing this are the refereeing system and the peer review process. These are used in scientific communities as a means of validating and legitimating knowledge, for example by reviewing journal papers before publishing or project proposals before granting funds, etc. This paper argues that peer review is a useful concept when looking at knowledge creation and legitimization in organizations. The social meaning of peer review is to legitimize new knowledge by organizationally sanctioning it and thereby creating a platform for collective sense making. This paper uses an example from a field study in a pharmaceutical company in order to illustrate this argument. The study took place in a quality support department where the quality of health care products and processes was assessed. The organization had a need for fast and reliable updating of information that could influence how the production process of pharmaceuticals should be carried out. In order to cope with these problems the department established an ‘evaluation loop’, which shared several characteristics with the peer review process.

Inspired by Herbert Simon€™s notion of nearly decomposable systems, researchers have examined modularity as a powerful approach to manage technological change in product innovation. We articulate this approach as the hierarchy-of-parts architecture explain how it emphasizes decomposition of a design into loosely coupled parts subsequent aggregation of these into an industrial product. To realize the scale benefits of modularity, firms successively freeze design specifications before production therefore only allow limited windows of functionality design redesign. This makes it difficult to take advantage of the increased speed by which digitized products can be developed modified. To address this problem, we draw on Christopher Alexander€™s notion of design patterns to introduce a complementary approach to manage technological change that is resilient to digital technology. We articulate this approach as the network-of-patterns architecture explain how it emphasizes generalization of ideas into patterns subsequent specialization of patterns for different design purposes. In response to the increased digitization of industrial products, we demonstrate the value of complementing hierarchy-of-parts thinking with network-of-patterns thinking through a case study of infotainment architecture at an automaker. As a result, we contribute to the literature on managing products in the digital age: we highlight the properties of digital technology that increase the speed by which digitized products can be redesigned, we offer the notion of architectural frames propose hierarchy-of-parts network-of-patterns as frames to support innovation of digitized products, we outline an agenda for future research that reconsiders the work of Simon Alexander as well as their followers to address key challenges in innovating digitized products.

Large software organizations establish software technology units for managing the methods and tools aimed at supporting their software engineers. This division between software development and new technologies for software development establishes specialized competencies, supports standardization across software projects and departments and provides dedicated resources for innovation. However such software technology units are faced with complex diffusion projects that are difficult and challenging to manage and that in many cases lead to unsatisfactory results. This paper reports from attempts to improve diffusion practices within a technology unit in a large software organization. Two complementary roles for software technology units, i.e. technology supplier and service provider, are presented and used for interpreting the experiences. The research suggests that technology units in large software organizations can improve their diffusion practices by complementing the traditional role as a technology supplier with that of a service provider. The paper offers lessons on how software organizations can take steps in that direction.

Prior research on digital ecosystems focuses on the focal firm (e.g., a platform owner) its ecosystem governance. However, there is a dearth of literature examining the non-focal actor, i.e., an ecosystem participant who is at the periphery of a digital ecosystem. This paper proposes a theoretical perspective of the non-focal firm€™s participation across digital ecosystems for cultivating its innovation habitat through capability search redeem. Capability search involves the location of external capability deemed valuable for extending the firm€™s innovation habitat. Capability redeem refers to the firm€™s use of external capability to develop, distribute, and/or monetize its products services. We generate sensitize the proposed perspective in the context of Sony Ericsson€™s innovation habitat by interpreting the mobile device manufacturer€™s participation across four digital ecosystems (Visual Basic, Java, Digital Music, Android). Our findings suggest that the non-focal actor cannot rely on a single ecosystem for addressing all relevant layers of innovation. It benefits from pursuing a pluralistic strategy, operating across digital ecosystems to avoid investing all efforts in the same ecosystem. The model of ecosystem capability search redeem, which is a result of ideographic research explanation, extends current perspectives on digital ecosystems contributes to the emerging literature in the digital age.