Building Capacity for Digital Innovation—A Game-Study

Abstract

Organizations are facing a constant stream of emerging technologies that require management and staff to be more flexible, open and critical in exploring new potential. In supporting new digital innovation, an organization will inevitably be affected on the level of strategy, business design and operation. In this paper, we explore games' potential as one approach for building digital innovation capacity in an organization since games have been proven beneficial in early innovation and learning processes. Theoretically, we focus on ‘building digital innovation capacity.’ This is understood as a process where the knowledge about digitalization and digital transformation is used to strengthen individuals' skills, abilities and opportunities—knowledge that can be used as a source for organizational learning and development. In this paper, we explore and discuss the role of games in building capacity for digital innovation in established organizations through an empirical study consisting of four game sessions with the game Cards for IoT. Overall, this game study implies three important themes concerning games' role in building capacity for digital innovation in established organizations: gameplay & facilitation, player mindset and contextualization. The perspectives, nuances and insights of the themes are discussed with the literature on capacity building.