Distinguishing digitization and digitalization: A systematic review and conceptual framework
Maria Gradillas, Llewellyn D. W. Thomas
kHUB post date: January 2025
Originally published: 13 July 2023 (PDMA JPIM • Vol 42, Issue 1 • January 2025)
Read time: 60 minutes
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With increasing interest in how digital technology impacts innovation, the constructs “digitization” and “digitalization” have become popular. However, different conceptualizations have emerged resulting in conceptual overlap and little definitional consensus. To understand how these two constructs have been used within innovation management, we systematically review both constructs and identify 26 different definitions used for both, underscoring the need for greater precision. Building from our systematic review, we synthesize and integrate these findings to derive clear and parsimonious definitions of digitization and digitalization and propose a conceptual framework that systematically links both constructs with existing innovation scholarship. We then discuss the implications of our framework on theories of the process of innovation and digital transformation. We recommend future research into digital design principles, digital product life cycle, knowledge accumulation, generativity, and the feedback dynamics within our framework. We also provide practitioner implications and limitations.
Practitioner Points
- Care should be taken when discussing digitization and digitalization, as both have a variety of meanings.
- To be able to craft effective policies managers and policymakers need to have a clear understanding of which phenomenon they seek to address.
- Digitization and digitalization are systematically related, with digitization driving digitalization, which in turn shapes both further digitization and digitalization.