In this theoretical review, we engage with empirical contributions to digital innovation scholarship to advance our understanding of physicality. Specifically, we develop a conceptualization of physicality grounded in work on the materiality of technology involving two facets: The focus on physicality – an artifact or an activity – and the criticality of physicality when theorizing digital innovation: as a primary or secondary factor. We use this framing to describe four different roles of physicality in the digital innovation literature – physicality as subject, vessel, context, or nexus of digital innovation. Each role of physicality provides a different perspective that, independently or jointly, serves research into emergent topics along the frontier of digital innovation phenomena. This paper thus contributes by consolidating and advancing the theoretical foundation for researchers wishing to attend to varying aspects of physicality when theorizing digital innovation.

中文翻译：

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物理性在数字创新中的四个作用：理论回顾


在这篇理论综述中，我们参与了对数字创新学术的实证贡献，以促进我们对物理性的理解。具体来说，我们以技术物质性的工作为基础，发展了物理性的概念化，涉及两个方面：对物理性的关注——一种人工制品或一项活动——以及在将数字创新理论化时物理性的重要性：作为主要或次要因素。我们用这个框架来描述物理性在数字创新文献中的四种不同角色——物理性作为数字创新的主体、容器、背景或纽带。物理性的每个角色都提供了一个不同的视角，独立或联合地为数字创新现象前沿的新兴主题的研究服务。因此，本文通过巩固和推进希望在理论化数字创新时关注物理性不同方面的研究人员的理论基础来做出贡献。