The impact of an accelerated digitalization on innovation and creativity : Investigating the effects of an accelerated digitalization due to the outbreak of COVID-19 on individuals’ innovative and creative working abilities.

Background: Due to the spread of COVID-19, there has been an acceleration in the digitalization which has impacted the working life of many individuals. People have been forced to work remotely and on a daily basis use more advanced digital tools, resulting in an enormous change in the work environment. These major changes in the work environments have affected people working in product and service development firms in various ways. With the main existing literature focusing on the organizational level, a gap in literature was identified on how an accelerated digitalization impacts the individuals working in companies. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate how the accelerated digitalization due to COVID-19 has impacted people working in service or product development firms in regard to their innovative and creative working abilities. Method: A qualitative method with an inductive approach was conducted using semi-structured interviews with ten relevant participants who are working in product or service development firms across Sweden. Conclusion: The findings suggest that individuals working in product or service developing firms have slightly similar drivers of both innovation and creativity. The analyzation of the findings conveyed that an accelerated digitalization seemed to have a more positive impact on both workers’ attitude towards digitalization and innovative and creative working abilities. Whereas an accelerated digitalization due to COVID-19, was established to have a more negative effect on creativity but not on innovation. Moreover, the findings are synchronized into a framework portraying in detail how the innovative and creative abilities of individuals working in product and/or service developing firms have been impacted by an accelerated digitalization due to COVID-19, and how the key elements has been affected.