Mapping Innovation in the Digital Transformation Era: the Role of Technology Convergence

Digital transformation is imperative for gaining and sustaining a firm’s competitive advantage. Hence, understanding the dynamics of technology evolution becomes salient for both scholars and practitioners. This chapter aims to provide a complementary perspective to the field of innovation by mapping and visualizing the patterns of digital transformation at the industry level with a particular focus on the role of technology convergence. The authors tracked 20 years of the technology of the U.S. communications industry in order to investigate how digital transformation has shaped the industry technological structure, which are the technological gaps and potential future technology trends. The results show a deep transformation of the industry with many interconnections between technology domains and a high degree of overlap between technology areas.