Digital knowledge engineering for strategy development

Abstract

This special issue focuses on digital knowledge engineering, where artificial intelligence (AI) emulates human judgment and behavior to create, organize, and implement knowledge bases. AI’s evolution from narrow applications to a versatile general-purpose technology (e.g., generative AI) marks a transformative era. This evolution reshapes industries, cultivates data-driven entities, and promises to revolutionize (business) relationships. Digital knowledge engineering precipitates a variety of outcomes: it affects individual practices, reshapes collaborative endeavors, and has the potential to contribute significantly to the advancement of a circular economy. However, companies must adeptly navigate digital knowledge engineering within their strategy development processes to realize these outcomes. They need to address challenges in the knowledge-creating process—data, technological, and informational aspects—and skillfully organize their design and governance. In this editorial, we integrate insights from the various research domains and the papers from this special issue, addressing the complexity of digital knowledge engineering. Furthermore, we present a comprehensive research framework and illuminate avenues for future exploration.