Can Digital Technology Use Stimulate User Potential Creativity to Enhance Digital Product Innovation Performance?

ABSTRACT As digital technologies continue to shape various industries, firms face the challenge of incentivising user participation in innovation through technology use in digital platforms. This study adopts a problematisation approach to challenge dominant assumptions in digital innovation and information systems (IS) literature. Based on this, we integrate the Awareness‐Motivation‐Capability (AMC) theory and Regulatory Focus Theory (RFT), investigating how ambidextrous use of digital technology (AUDT) impacts digital product innovation through unleashing user potential creativity. Drawing on a dataset of 79 682 users from Thingiverse, our empirical findings reveal that AUDT significantly enhances innovation performance. Yet, a tension within user potential creativity emerges: while AUDT strengthens lead userness and thereby improves innovation outcomes, it concurrently diminishes intrinsic motivation, which negatively impacts performance. Furthermore, user regulatory focus moderates these effects: promotion focus exerts two‐sided effects—positively/negatively moderating the relationships between AUDT, intrinsic motivation/lead userness, and innovation performance. Prevention focus consistently attenuates these effects. This study offers several contributions to IS and digital innovation literature. First, we extend the conceptualisation of AUDT as a mechanism for balancing efficiency and exploration in digital platforms. Second, we uncover the tension between lead userness and intrinsic motivation within user potential creativity. Third, by examining the mediating/moderating role of user potential creativity/regulatory focus, we advance a more nuanced understanding of how digital technology use, individual traits and psychological orientations interact. These insights offer valuable theoretical and practical implications for IS and digital innovation management.