Hyperbolic organizational identity and identity of digital artifacts: a comparative study of healthcare innovations

Abstract

As digital technologies move toward the core of an organization’s offerings, the identity of many contemporary organizations is now born in association with the digital technology that characterizes them. Entrepreneurs largely rely on setting up high expectations to attract initial resources to materialize the idea for their digital innovation. However, such a tactic may be problematic when their eventual digital artifact contradicts their core organizational identity, leading to their legitimacy loss. In this ongoing study, we explore a novel phenomenon of hyperbolic organizational identity. Drawing on longitudinal archival sources, we conduct a comparative case study of IBM Watson and DeepMind, whose identities both became hyperbolic, yet experienced different outcomes in their healthcare innovations. From our findings to date, a preliminary dialectical process model is presented that depicts the interplay between organizational and technical identities of the digital artifact in leading to the formation and change in hyperbolic organizational identity.