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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.

This study illustrates the experience of scholar–practitioner collaboration for data-driven decision-making through the problematic of optimizing facility locations and minimizing logistics costs for La Palette Rouge (LPR) of Portugal.

The authors used a mixed mixed-method approach involving (1) a quantitative exploratory analysis of big data, which applied analytics and mathematical modeling to optimize LPR's logistics network, and (2) an illustrative case of scholar–practitioner collaboration for data-driven decision-making.

The quantitative analysis compared more than 20 million possible configurations and proposed the optimal logistics structures. The proposed optimization model minimizes the logistics costs by 22%. Another optimal configuration revealed that LPR can minimize logistics costs by 12% through closing one of its facilities. The illustrative description demonstrates that well-established resource-rich multinational enterprises do not necessarily have the in-house capabilities and competencies to handle and analyze big data.

The mathematical modeling for optimizing logistics networks demonstrates that outcomes are readily actionable for practitioners and can be extended to other country and industry contexts with logistics operations. The case illustrates that synergistic relationships can be created, and the opportunities exist between scholars and practitioners in the field of Logistics 4.0 and that scientific researcher is necessary for solving problems and issues that arise in practice while advancing knowledge.

The study illustrates that several Logistics 4.0 challenges highlighted in the literature can be collectively addressed through scholar–practitioner collaborations. The authors discuss the implications of such collaborations for adopting virtual and augmented reality (AR) technologies and to develop the capabilities for maximizing their benefits in mature low-medium technology industries, such as the food logistics industry.

Sustainable development challenges have been gaining increased attention from scholars across a wide range of disciplines and governments and business leaders of developed and developing countries. In this chapter, we present selected Latin American socioeconomic indicators, and we note that much progress is needed to achieve the region's many sustainable development goals. We bring forth contributions from different streams of innovation studies for addressing grand challenges, and we discourse on how they push the sustainable development mandate forward. Innovation scholars have highlighted the need to elaborate novel transformational approaches to innovation for addressing such pressing grand challenges. Some scholars have also proposed that while the innovation systems framework is well-suited for addressing sustainable development challenges, it must first be profoundly and radically transformed to account for the novel ways of innovating and integrating a diversity of systemic economic actors and social stakeholders who have conflicting visions, interests, norms, and expectations. We present the different foundational strengths and weaknesses of the innovation systems framework and we discuss the pertinence for its profound and radical transformation. We conclude by organizing these different, yet complementary views of innovation in a conceptual framework while discussing the implications for Latin America and future research.