Digital opportunities for incumbents – A resource-centric perspective

Abstract

Digitalization presents companies with abundant opportunities, i.e., action possibilities leading to new products, services, and business models. Specifically, digital opportunities for incumbents require attention as their resource base can be both asset and liability, and the interplay between incumbents’ resources and digital opportunities is hardly understood. To conceptualize this interplay, we present a taxonomy of digital opportunities for incumbents and related stylized facts of opportunity conversion. As justificatory knowledge, we build on the resource-based view and organizational ambidexterity. Our work contributes to descriptive knowledge at the interface between digital innovation and transformation, providing new perspectives on incumbents’ digitally extended resources.