Digital catch-up through resource orchestration: a case study of latecomers in intelligent manufacturing

Digital technologies provide latecomer manufacturers with technological catch-up opportunities in emerging field of intelligent manufacturing (IM). Prior studies on IM mainly focused on firms from developed countries or digitally-savvy firms. However, latecomer firms that have inadequate resources should identify and leverage diverse digital-related resources to achieve digital catch-up in IM, and the research on their digital catch-up remains limited. Resource orchestration is a sound guiding theory that we adopt to examine this phenomenon. This study conducts an in-depth case study of the successful catch-up of a role-model firm in China and reveals a three-phase process model for the digital catch-up of latecomers in IM. Our findings contribute to existing literature on IM fields, latecomers’ catch-up phenomena, resource orchestration theory, as well as knowledge of technology analysis and strategic management. The model also can be practical guidance for latecomers to achieve digital catch-up step by step.