Digital twins and innovation management: a literature review, framework, challenge, and future direction

ABSTRACT

Managing innovation in firms is reshaped by the rapidly developing technology - digital twins (DTs). Considering DTs’ substitution for humans reorganises the firm's whole innovation process. This paper discusses and summarises the applications, challenges, and prospects of DTs in innovation management through a systematic literature review. Based on 48 articles and two major theories, this paper describes a new framework to reveal how DTs can compensate for human deficiencies. The results show that DTs can effectively break through the constraints humans face in innovation from four aspects: information searching, information processing, innovation idea measurement, and monitoring. This paper outlines DTs applications and difficulties for companies’ innovation management and makes recommendations.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital twin
• innovation management
• innovation process
• information processing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China: [Grant Number 71672030,72072028]; Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities: [Grant Number N2206006].

Notes on contributors

Chong Xin

Chong Xin is an Associate Professor of Business Administration at Northeastern University, Shenyang, China. She received a Ph. D. degree in Business Administration from Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China. Her research interests include green product innovation, and inter-organisational relationship networks. She was a recipient of the National Defense Science and Technology Progress Award from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the People’s Republic of China, in 2009.

Yushi Wang

Yushi Wang received a B.S. degree in Tourism Management from Hainan University, Hainan, China. She is currently working toward the M.S. degree in Business Administration with the School of Business Administration, Northeastern University, Shenyang, China. Her research interests include green product innovation and performance.