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Food sustainability is a world-acknowledged issue that requires urgent integrated solutions at multi-levels. This study aims to explore how food firms can improve their sustainability performance through digital traceability practices, considering the mediating effect of sustainability-oriented innovation (SOI) and the moderating effect of supply chain learning (SCL) for the food supply chain therein.

Hierarchical regression with a moderated mediation model is used to test the proposed hypotheses with a sample of 359 food firms from four provinces in China.

Digital traceability has a significant positive impact on the three pillars of sustainability performances among food firms. SOI (product innovation, process innovation and organisational innovation) mediates the relationship between digital traceability and sustainability performance. SCL plays moderating roles in the linkage between digital traceability and both product and process innovation, respectively.

This paper contributes as one of the first studies to develop digital traceability practices and their sustainability-related improvements for Chinese food firms; it extends studies on supply chain traceability to a typical emerging market. This finding can support food sustainability practice in terms of where and how to invest in sustainability innovation and how to improve economic, environmental and social performance.

This study aims to focus on a key unanswered question about how digitalization and the knowledge processes it enables affect firms’ strategies in the international arena.

The authors conduct a systematic literature review of relevant theoretical and empirical studies covering over 20 years of research (from 2000 to 2023) and including 73 journal papers.

This review allows us to highlight a relationship between firms’ international strategies and the knowledge processes enabled by applying digital technologies. Specifically, the authors discuss the characteristics of patterns of knowledge flows and knowledge processes (their origin, the type of knowledge they carry on and their directionality) as determinants for the emergence of diverse international strategies embraced by single firms or by populations of firms within ecosystems, networks, global value chains or alliances.

Despite digital technologies constituting important antecedents and critical factors for the internationalization process, and international businesses in general, and operating cross borders implies the enactment of highly knowledge-intensive processes, current literature still fails to provide a holistic picture of how firms strategically use what they know and seek out what they do not know in the international environment, using the affordances of digital technologies.

This study aims to excavate the external and internal driving factors of enterprise digital innovation and further condense the function mechanisms and response actions of the innovation process as well as the final innovation outcomes to propose the theoretical framework of enterprise digital innovation with the logic thread of “innovation motivation–innovation process–innovation result”.

Based on the digital background and integrating previous case studies on enterprise digital innovation, this study uses qualitative meta-analysis to explore the motivations of enterprise digital innovation, the function mechanisms and response actions of innovation process as well as the innovation outcomes.

This study finds that digitally transformed enterprises driven by external environmental factors and internal organizational factors follow the logic of adaptive and open innovation, and finally accomplish the digital innovation results of products, services, processes, business models, technology and social responsibility through the response actions of adaptation and interaction mechanisms.

In the digital economy era, digital innovation has become the key strategic choice for enterprise transformation, upgrading and innovation. Why and how enterprises realize digital innovation with the help of emerging digital technology remain to be explored. This study has important theoretical significance and practical value for the digital innovation and transformation of enterprises under the digital background.

As various scholars have pointed out, the exponential growth in digital technologies has resulted in significant improvements to many business processes, and has also played a significant role in the field of innovation. The purpose of this paper is to organise the contributions of this special issue according to a framework that considers three topics currently being debated extensively in literature: innovation inputs, innovation processes and innovation outcomes.

Papers in this special issue adopt both qualitative and quantitative approaches based on the purpose of the study, which gives also a methodological variety to the special issue.

Papers in this special issue show that because of digital technologies: first, inputs are progressively becoming interrelated, making most of innovation endeavours happening in inter-organizational ecosystems of actors; second, innovation processes are gradually being compressed, anticipating and enhancing the phases in which customer feedback is gathered and employed; and finally, innovation outputs are increasingly taking the form of platforms used to create value by matching the supply of an asset with demand.

The value of this and other papers included in the special issue consists of embracing the topic of digital innovation from a managerial standpoint, contributing to the understanding of how the innovation process and other business processes may be affected by the use of digital technologies.

There is a lack of empirical-based models derived from practice to explain the digital innovation process. The authors investigate how the digital innovation process unfolds in practice.

The authors undertake an exploratory and phenomenological study of 21 Malaysian small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the information and communication technology (ICT) sector.

The findings show that the delineation between digital innovation process and outcome is blurred in practice, due to the process' iterative nature. Under this process, customers' role has changed from being passive receivers of innovative products to active reviewers, testers, influential decision-makers, initiators and co-creators at different review points in the innovation process. Enterprises' role has expanded from being the initiator of the innovation process to being a cogitative actor by seeking and absorbing knowledge from customer reviews into the digital innovation process. Market analysis is often the initiator of the digital innovation process, and the findings shed light on the underlying causative mechanisms of the initiation stage, which are understudied and not well understood in the existing literature.

The study contributes to academic knowledge by answering scholars' call for developing third-generation practice-based innovation models, which accounts for enterprises' context-specificities and internal and external environments, and for exploring the suitability of the need–solution fit approach for the digital innovation process. Such models have only been conceptually advocated in the literature. The study also informs practitioners on the organizational and operational activities involved in managing and strategizing for the digital innovation process.

Digital transformations are changing society, and they force industries to react to the market more frequently. Managers are aware of new technical demands, which increase the pressure of meeting those demands. To meet technical demands, radical innovations are one way to stay competitive. However, it is more complex to make them a part of the business. The purpose of this study was to create a framework for small and medium-sized enterprises to become more efficient by starting to digitalise their business processes with the expertise of an external innovation partner.

The study was performed at a case company with an abductive approach where both deduction and induction were used to study the empirical findings and formulate new theories in relation to recognised theory. Qualitative methods have been used in the empirical study due to their flexibility and the fact that the focus of the information gathering was to create a context.

The analysis indicates that a certain level of process maturity can be put in relation to a certain innovation level and a certain level of digital change. According to a process maturity model, an adaptable process could respond to changes in customer demands better, which can be related to changes in the business domain and the society. The research resulted in a conceptual cooperative model based on the three domains of the study. The model has been validated using design reviews with the case company, a consultancy firm and together with an innovation partner.

The model will be a practical template for Small and Medium Enterprises to follow when digitalising business processes and how to prioritise them.

The proposed framework of how to digitalise at different innovation levels coupled to process maturity levels is a novel idea that could be used for further research.

This paper addresses the growing fragmentation between traditional and digital service innovation (DSI) research and offers a unifying metatheoretical framework.

Grounded in service-dominant (S-D) logic's service ecosystems perspective, this study builds on an institutional and systemic, rather than product-centric and linear, conceptualization of value creation to offer a unifying framework for (digital) service innovation that applies to both physical and digital service provisions.

This paper questions the commonly perpetuated idea that DSI fundamentally changes the nature of innovation. Instead, it highlights resource liquification—the decoupling of information from the technologies that store, transmit, or process this information—as a distinguishing characteristic of DSI. Liquification, however, does not affect the relational and institutional nature of service innovation, which is always characterized by (1) the emergence of novel outcomes, (2) distributed governance and (3) symbiotic design. Instead, liquification makes these three characteristics more salient.

In presenting a cohesive service innovation framework, this study underscores that all innovation processes are rooted in combinatorial evolution. Here, service-providing actors (re)combine technologies (or more generally, institutions) to adapt their value cocreation practices. This research demonstrates that such (re)combinations exhibit emergence, distributed governance and symbiotic design. While these characteristics may initially seem novel and unique to DSI, it reveals that their fundamental mechanisms are not limited to digital service ecosystems. They are, in fact, integral to service innovation across virtual, physical and blended contexts. The study highlights the importance of exercising caution in assuming that the emergence of novel technologies, including digital technologies, necessitates a concurrent rethinking of the fundamental processes of service innovation.

Existing innovation frameworks suggest that manufacturing firms have traditionally developed a complementary model of technological innovations comprising process and product innovations (e.g. Oslo Manual). This article presents digital service innovation as a novel form of technological innovation that is capable of enhancing the performance of firms in certain manufacturing industries.

Drawing on technological innovation and digital servitization fields of research, this study argues that digital service innovation, in manufacturing contexts, complements traditional sources of technological innovation, so increasing the profit margins of firms. This effect is significant in industries characterized by business-to-business contexts, high presence of link channels and long product life spans (e.g. manufacturing and computer-based industries). Predictions are tested on a unique sample of 423 Spanish manufacturing firms using parametric (t-test) and nonparametric (fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis, fsQCA) approaches.

The results of this analysis show that a necessary condition so that manufacturing firms can increase profits is the deployment of simultaneous process and product innovations. It also reveals that optimal configuration requires that digital service innovation be undertaken, particularly in machinery and computer-based manufacturing industries. Hence, all three sources of technological innovation are brought together in order to reach the highest levels of company performance. The evidence suggests that technological innovation and digital servitization are closely interrelated in highly innovative manufacturing contexts.

This study's originality and value reside in the fact that it reveals the existence of firms incorporating digital service innovation – a new, technological innovation dimension that challenges existing innovation frameworks – to complement traditional technological innovation sources, namely process and product innovation. Moreover, the study conceptualizes and empirically tests the value-adding role of digital services in firms' technological innovation portfolio.

This paper aims to examine the dynamic relationship between digital business intensity (DBI) and process innovation through knowledge management. More specifically, the paper investigates the mechanism through which DBI and knowledge management jointly influence process innovation.

The study used a single informant approach of data collection and consistent with prior research, and a random sample of CIOs was selected and invited to participate in the survey resulting in a total 193 usable responses. The analysis and empirical validation of the research model used partial least square.

The results reveal a positive link between DBI and process innovation. This finding presents empirical support for hitherto anecdotal evidence regarding the impact of DBI on process innovation. In particular, the study notes the impactful role of DBI as an input repertoire that facilitates knowledge management with subsequent positive effects on process innovation. Results further surface an accentuating interplay between DBI and knowledge management on process innovation.

The current study advances our understanding of how DBI, a pre-condition to attaining digital business strategy, influences process innovation. Moreover, investigating the consequences of DBI should help offer an initial insight to managers and top management facing the challenge of implementing a successful digital footprint in an increasingly digital business landscape. Furthermore, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to investigate how digitization efforts and knowledge management practices jointly affect process innovation.

While previous research has demonstrated the positive effects of digital business strategies on operational efficiency, financial performance and value creation, little is known about how such strategies influence innovation performance. To address the gap, this paper aims to investigate the impact of a firm’s digital business strategy on its innovation performance.

Drawing on the dynamic capability view, this study examines the mechanism through which a digital business strategy affects innovation performance. Data were collected from 215 firms in China and analyzed using multiple regression and structural equation modeling.

The empirical analysis reveals that a firm’s digital business strategy has positive impacts on both product and process innovation performance. These impacts are partially mediated by knowledge-based dynamic capability. Additionally, a firm’s digital business strategy interacts positively with its entrepreneurial orientation in facilitating knowledge-based dynamic capability. Moreover, market turbulence enhances the strength of this interaction effect. Therefore, entrepreneurial-oriented firms operating in turbulent markets can benefit more from digital business strategies to enhance their knowledge-based dynamic capabilities and consequently improve their innovation performance.

This study contributes to the understanding of how a firm’s digital business strategy interacts with entrepreneurial orientation in turbulent markets to shape knowledge-based dynamic capability, which in turn enhances the firm’s innovation performance.