Journal publication · 2022
Wang, G., Henfridsson, O., Nandhakumar, J., & Yoo, Y. (2022). Product meaning in digital product innovation. MIS Quarterly, 46(2), 947–976. https://doi.org/10.25300/MISQ/2022/15252
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Interactive paper explorationStarting view
A focus on technical capability leaves the emerging product’s meaning underexplained.
Original insight
Reinforce a coherent core while differentiating it through emerging component meanings.
Consequence
Meaning sedimentation makes the evolving product both comprehensible and open to further innovation.
Digital product innovation research largely emphasised architecture, organising logics, and innovation tools. Meaning-making was often treated as establishing a meaning and subsequently implementing it in an artifact.
The paper develops an explanatory process theory in which reinforcing and differentiating loops work together through meaning sedimentation. New meanings emerge during design, then guide further design rather than merely describe its outcome.
Develop a comprehensible and coherent product meaning.
Open up emerging meanings across physical and digital components.
Extend the core product meaning through reciprocal meaning-making.
The loops are reciprocal. Neither is a higher score or a later maturity level.
Concept explorer
Select a concept to see its role in this paper’s contribution.
Connecting digital and physical components and unifying component meanings make the overall product meaning coherent.
Repositioning across digital and physical design and reinterpreting the whole through component meanings generate new product meanings.
The two loops progressively extend a core product meaning while balancing comprehensibility and newness.
The original model specifies two reciprocal loops and four constituent modalities: connecting, unifying, repositioning, and reinterpreting. Meaning-making remains entangled with artifact creation throughout design.
Figure 5 and theoretical integration, pp. 968–969.
The case explains how bodily experience of physical and digital components generates meanings that redirect design. New product meanings become drivers of further innovation as well as outcomes.
Implications, pp. 969–970.
Keep a recognisable core meaning, while allowing designers to notice and pursue meanings that emerge across component boundaries. Excessive comprehensibility can trap design in repetition.
Practical implications, p. 970.
Evaluate whether digital and physical components communicate compatible meanings. A technically capable combination may still be confusing as a whole product.
Practical implications, pp. 970–971; the Google Glass discussion is an illustrative application, not a tested intervention.
Why this matters
As digital capabilities enter familiar physical products, technical functionality alone does not explain what the resulting product should mean or why people should recognise its value.
Discuss this researchInterpretive single-case study of TopTech’s digital theatre, analysing 15 design changes. This is an explanatory theory, not a predictive model; its stated scope is designer-led innovation involving hybrid physical–digital products.
Interpretive case, observations, interviews, and longitudinal analysis of 15 design artifacts.
Figure 5, meaning-making loops, meaning sedimentation, and contributions.
Practical implications and explicit boundary conditions.
This exploration is based on the author-supplied full text. It distinguishes the paper’s own contribution from established concepts it draws on. For formal citation, consult the publication.