ABSTRACT: Digital Twins are widely recognized as a transformative technological trend, yet their potential to foster innovation, particularly their generative capabilities, remains underexplored. This paper investigates how they can transcend traditional optimization roles to serve as tools for advancing knowledge and generativity in the design of their physical counterparts. Leveraging C-K theory, a framework is presented for modeling design processes with Digital Twins, characterizing design scenarios and identifying two distinct forms of generativity. An illustration of these results shows how designers can leverage Digital Twin reflexive capacity to challenge and reconfigure underlying knowledge of their physical counterparts. The transformative value of this reflexivity, combined with remodeling capabilities, is highlights the exploration of new design pathway for Digital Twins themselves.
Mercat et al. (2025) studied this question.