Resumo

Digital Innovation (DI) studies has grown considerably, which has led to the emergence of new approaches and theoretical aspects that need to be examined and considered. Thus, this paper aims to understand what are the main theoretical pillars that support the structure of DI theories and fields, how it evolved over the years and what are the directions that lead to future trends.

A mix-methods using the citation and co-citation analysis associated with bibliometric methods, Social Network Analysis, and a systematic review of the literature. Considering publications between 1987 and 2020, the longitudinal analysis results of 2513 works indicate the evolution of the main streams of thoughts that support the current DI research fields and depict a research orientation and structure for future works that can generate relevant contributions for the theoretical development of the area.

Digital Innovation (DI) has been affected all sectors of society, specifically economies. The digital revolution has increasingly steadily converted analog information into digital formats, making information more amenable to automated processing (Teece, 2018). Although DI is a popular point of discussion, the ideas of digital products, services, and mediums were well-understood in the 1990s and 2000s. However, there is currently not commonly accepted definition for the term DI.

We believe that a multidisciplinary discussion is required, given that DI is multidisciplinary involving changes in strategy, organization, information technology, supply chains and marketing. Nowadays' business world, managers are increasingly confronted with responding to the advent of new digital technologies that blur market boundaries and change agent roles (e.g., customers become co-producers, competitors become collaborators, and firms that vertically integrate or bypass existing parties).

In the information systems, researchers have paid attention to technical developments regarding adoption and use of digital technologies and resultant business value (Nambisan et al., 2017; Sambamurthy, Bharadwaj & Grover, 2003). To provide theorical and managerial guidance, we must increase our understanding of how DI has been evolved and which factors affect the construct and how the influencers are structuring their findings that affect organizational strategies.

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