Digital Innovation Challenges : The Case of an Academic Library

The push to accelerate digitalization, particularly in educational organizations like academic libraries, highlights the innovation potential. Our study shows that achieving innovation requires understanding unprecedented complexity and tensions that cannot be overlooked. We present three identified phases: (1) emergence of digital practices; (2) enforced experimentation with digital initiatives; and, (3) advancing with digital resources, that depict an organization’s digital innovation journey. Through the case of an academic library, we capture the depths of complexities and tensions in the three phases, where we identify two crucial aspects—work practices and co-dependence – that undergo digital innovation across these three phases. Our findings offer new insights into the complexity and tension-filled nature of digital innovation, particularly pertaining to academic libraries. Despite such challenges, these organizations undergo a transformative digital innovation process, worthy of investigating in future endeavours.