How Do Japanese SMEs Generate Digital Business Value from SMACIT Technologies with Knowledge Creation?

This study provides further evidence from Japanese Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) on the capabilities organizations need in order to take advantage of the opportunities that digital technologies (such as Social, Mobile, Analytics, Cloud and IoT or SMACIT) offer. Quantitative data is used to validate and expand previous findings on the relationship between IT, Digital Business Value and Knowledge Creation Capabilities (KCC). KCC is explored as an organizational capability that moderates the value obtained from IT and digital technologies. The level of achievement of business objectives by IT and digital technologies was analyzed using four categories of business objectives from the Balanced Scorecard. The evidence shows that organizations that are able to efficiently apply IT to achieve business objectives can also experience similar results on digital technologies. This implies that in order to be successful with digital technologies, a foundation would be the successful delivery of IT. A deeper analysis was conducted on Knowledge Creation Process as a preliminary study yielded to inconclusive findings suggesting that KCC had a negative impact on business objectives in opposition to what Knowledge-based view may consider and; in opposite to the characteristic that SMACIT technologies are highly dependent on information and could be considered to go hand in hand with how new information and knowledge is combined in order to create new products and services.

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