Digital Twins as a Driver of Creativity

Abstract

The increasing integration of digital technologies spurs organizational innovation. Specifically, digital twins, which are digital replicas of physical entities, have unlocked business potential by simulating, predicting, and optimizing real-world performance, thus enabling innovation opportunities. However, the relationship between digital twins and creativity, which is a precursor to innovation, remains elusive. Therefore, our study adopts a case-study approach to analyze qualitative data from six industrial Finnish companies. The result shows that digital twins influence individual creativity components: motivation, skills in the task domain, and creativity-relevant processes. Additionally, digital twins can potentially foster creative collaboration and promote radical innovation. This study offers theoretical and practical contributions as well as future research directions for promoting creativity in industrial settings using digital twins.