The accessibility and applicability of resources in innovation systems: Unpacking systemic problems within digital innovation systems

Digital technologies are characterised by pervasiveness, meaning they have numerous application areas with wide-ranging sociotechnical impacts. The Technological Innovation System (TIS) framework analyses the sociotechnical processes leading to and inhibiting innovation. To analyse TIS surrounding digital technologies, i.e. Digital Innovation Systems, this research constructs and implements a novel framework that draws on resource-based perspectives in TIS and the characteristics of pervasive innovation. The framework emphasises that innovation resources may have different levels of accessibility and applicability, allowing us to introduce four associated systemic problem types – the lack of accessibility and applicability, missing resources, and low quantity of resources. We apply the framework to a qualitative case study on digital innovation in the Dutch processing industries. Using 28 semi-structured interviews, we map out 86 discrete innovation resources relevant to the digital innovation system in the Dutch processing industries, and identify 27 systemic problems associated with these resources, of which two-thirds are accessibility or applicability problems. The data helps us refine the granularity of accessibility and applicability of innovation resources. We find that our extended TIS framework better captures pervasive technologies’ TIS elements through discrete resources and allows for a deeper diagnosis of their systemic problems.