Co-creation for Digitalization: A Study of Co-creation in Norwegian Business Clusters

There is a growing emphasis on digitalization in research and business practice. The rapid progress in digital technologies compel firms to innovate and transform their businesses. One way to improve the capacity to innovate and transform is to cooperate with others. However, there is a general lack of research on how co-creation among businesses can facilitate digitalization. This qualitative study explores how co-creation among businesses can stimulate and facilitate digitalization. We have investigated co-creation activities involving companies in business clusters. This paper reports from a study of three business clusters in Norway. We conducted an inductive qualitative study comprising semi-structured interviews as the primary empirical data source. 12 interviews were carried out with informants from three clusters. We found that the co-creation arenas and activities in the business clusters stimulate and facilitate digitalization among the cluster companies. We also addressed the most significant drivers and barriers to co-creation to get a deeper understanding of the co-creation phenomenon.