Rethinking the digital transformation in knowledge-intensive services: A technology space analysis

The world is in the midst of a digital transformation. An intensified prevalence and use of digital technologies is fundamentally changing organizations and economies. However, the notion of 'digital transformation' is both theoretically and empirically underspecified. This paper rethinks the digital transformation narrative theoretically by embedding the concept in concurrent debates about technological revolutions and neo-Schumpeterian innovation theory. Empirically, the paper specifies the digital transformation by analysing the technological composition of key start-up and scale-up companies in the knowledge-intensive services sector. Undertaking a technology space analysis of 40,754 start-up and scale-up companies derived from the near real-time Dealroom.co database, we analyse which technologies and application domains are currently converging, distilling of key elements of the digital transformation. The paper concludes that the transmission of digital technologies is often indirect through ‘key enabling technology clusters’ that connect the technological vanguard to application domains.