Digital innovation in context: Exploring serendipitous and unbounded digital innovation at the church of Sweden

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how digital innovation processes emerge and evolve in organizational settings, and how serendipitous and unbounded digital innovations affect organizations’ overall digital directions.

The authors draw on an interpretive case study of the Church of Sweden, tracing in detail the design, deployment and governance of an interactive website for digital prayer, the Prayer Web (PW).

The findings show how the site came about in a serendipitous manner, created by an advertising agency as part of a marketing campaign. In turn, the unbounded nature of digital innovation was revealed as the wide and rapid adoption of the PW raised issues concerning the church’s overall digital direction linked to centralized control, as well as the nature and role of pastors, prayer and communities, as the site allowed people to post prayers and spread their messages (initially with no moderation).

The authors explore the serendipitous and unbounded ways in which digital innovation emerged and evolved in a traditional organization with a long legacy as an important societal institution. The paper contributes by generating rich insights on the role of the distinct aspects of digital technology in serendipitous and unbounded digital innovation. It particularly highlights how the editability and reprogrammability of digital artifacts triggered unexpected new behaviors and governance requirements in the organization under study. The authors encourage further research into the interrelationship between multiple unbounded and serendipitous digital innovations in an organization over time.