Shared digital identity and rich knowledge ties in global 3D printing—A drizzle in the clouds?

Abstract

Research Summary Modern audio‐visual digital technology enables the immediate exchange of explicit, but also of tacit knowledge worldwide. Still, when not embedded in strong ties, the international exchange of tacit and proprietary knowledge becomes risky. Our flexible pattern matching qualitative research approach develops new theory and finds that in the nascent 3D printing industry firms exchange explicit and tacit knowledge globally, even in weak ties. The exchanges seem to be grounded in identification processes with digital technology forming a shared digital identity. We conceptualize the shared digital identity as the collective self‐concept(s) of an in‐group towards the creation, emergence, application, and development of digital technology built on a sense of community, enthusiasm, being part of something special as well as common values and norms. Managerial Summary Firms in the nascent digital industry of 3D printing share knowledge worldwide. Potentials of transferring tacit and proprietary knowledge by modern audio‐visual digital technologies increase constantly. However, so do the dangers of knowledge leakage and competitive risks. A resolution of this tension comes from a new phenomenon, the shared digital identity. A shared digital identity within and among firms enables and informally guards the sharing of tacit and proprietary knowledge via digital technologies. We conceptualize the shared digital identity by a sense of community, enthusiasm, being part of something special as well as common values and norms. The knowledge exchanges assisted by digital technology occur under the aegis of the shared digital identity and accelerate the emergence of digital technologies and so facilitate global business.

Entrepreneurship of an institutional field: the emergence of coworking spaces for digital business models

“…While they have been concentrating on urban areas first, they start to proliferate into rural areas too. Possibly, coworking spaces are a far fetching concept for business model development and entrepreneurship in the sharing economy ranging from solo-entrepreneurs to incumbent firms (Kraus et al 2019;Bouncken and Barwinski 2020;Bouncken et al 2020b;Filser et al 2020). One driver is the institutional isomorphism around digital work and allow their users to cope with the deficits of digitalization, its deficits of personal contact, and the needs of experimentation, knowledge exchange, and mutual knowledge creation in the information and innovation focused world.…”

“…One driver is the institutional isomorphism around digital work and allow their users to cope with the deficits of digitalization, its deficits of personal contact, and the needs of experimentation, knowledge exchange, and mutual knowledge creation in the information and innovation focused world. Another driver is the shared sense of community and the strong shared identity of coworking-users that show signs of a digital identity (Bouncken and Barwinski 2020).…”

Family Firms, Alliance Governance and Mutual Knowledge Creation

“…Mutual knowledge creation among allying firms can provide far more significant complementarities and creativity than a plain transfer of knowledge among allying firms can do for both innovation and firm performance (Buckley et al ., 2009). The merger, recombination and reciprocity of knowledge, especially of rich tacit knowledge (Bouncken and Barwinski, 2020), underpinning mutual knowledge creation breed creativity (Grant and Baden‐Fuller, 2004). However, how can firms facilitate mutual knowledge creation in alliances?…”

Digital Marketing in Culinary Tourism : A Case of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in Indonesia

“…This will normally change their current jobs and influence the personalities of representatives and the character of the association in general [70]. Supervisors need to help workers to grow in like manner [75] and to make a personality and job inside the association identified with digitalization [71].…”

“…The appropriation of new computerized advancements regularly requires accomplished workers and the current writing recommends that gifted representatives are fundamental for troublesome digitalization [49]. Moreover, and dependent on a common excitement and advanced character [70] those representatives are integral to remaking esteems, standards, and authoritative conduct during the change procedure [23], [54].…”