Abstract: As the basic units for conducting digital innovation activities within organizations, digital innovation teams face persistent contradictory relationships among interdependent socio-technical elements, giving rise to complex and salient innovation tensions. How these innovation tensions can be transformed into drivers of, rather than barriers to, innovation remains an urgent question. Although existing literature has examined both the commonalities and specificities of innovation tensions in digital contexts, systematic understanding of their manifestations and mechanisms in digital innovation teams is still lacking.
To address this gap, this study draws on paradox theory as an overarching lens to investigate the conceptualization and multilevel effects of innovation tensions in digital innovation teams. First, grounded in socio-technical systems theory, the study defines innovation tensions in digital innovation teams as “persistent contradictory relationships among interdependent socio-technical elements during digital innovation activities” and preliminarily identify three core dimensions: social-focused tensions, technology-focused tensions, and hybrid-focused tensions. On this basis, the study outlines a rigorous scale development procedure for developing a corresponding measurement instrument, providing a measurement foundation for empirical research on innovation tensions in digital innovation teams. Second, building on the stage-specific characteristics of the innovation process, the study constructs a multilevel mechanism model of innovation tensions at both the individual and team levels. At the individual level, drawing on activation theory, the study proposes a “too much of a good thing” effect of innovation tensions on individual innovative idea generation. Specifically, innovation tensions in digital innovation teams are proposed to exhibit an inverted U-shaped relationship with individual agile responsiveness; that is, a moderate level of innovation tension is most conducive to stimulating individual agile responsiveness, whereas both excessively low and excessively high levels of tension weaken agile responsiveness, thereby affecting individual innovative idea generation. Paradox mindset and core self-evaluation moderate this inverted U-shaped relationship between innovation tensions and individual agile responsiveness. Specifically, individuals with a strong paradox mindset can maintain agile responsiveness under higher levels of innovation tension, while individuals with high core self-evaluation show a smaller decline in agile responsiveness under high tension. Furthermore, both moderators also shape the indirect inverted U-shaped relationship through which innovation tensions influence individual innovative idea generation via individual agility. At the team level, adopting a team process perspective, the study proposes a “double-edged sword” effect of innovation tensions on the generation and implementation of team innovative ideas. On the one hand, innovation tensions facilitate team conventional routine replication, which in turn benefits the implementation of team innovative ideas but hinders the generation of team innovative ideas. On the other hand, innovation tensions also promote team flexible routine replication, which in turn benefits the generation of team innovative ideas but hinders the implementation of team innovative ideas. Digital platform ecosystem embeddedness and team shared vision can optimize the overall impact of innovation tensions on the team innovation process by amplifying their positive effects while mitigating their negative effects.
The expected contributions of this study are threefold. First, by focusing on digital innovation teams as basic innovation units, this study systematically elucidates the conceptualization of innovation tensions in digital contexts and lays the foundation for developing a corresponding measurement instrument. This not only advances the contextualized development of the innovation tension construct and its manifestations but also facilitates the transition of research on innovation tensions in digital innovation teams from theoretical discussion to empirical testing. Second, by exploring the multilevel and multifaceted effects of innovation tensions in digital innovation teams, this study reveals a “too much of a good thing” effect at the individual level and a “double-edged sword” effect at the team level, thereby deepening the overall understanding of the micro-mechanisms linking innovation tensions and innovation outcomes in digital contexts and providing a more integrative theoretical framework for understanding and guiding the effective management of innovation tensions in digital innovation teams. Third, this study extends research on the antecedent mechanisms of innovation outputs in digital innovation teams, offering a new theoretical perspective for explaining the generative processes and activation pathways of team innovation outputs in digital contexts, while also providing practical implications for promoting innovation outputs in digital innovation teams.

Key words: digital innovation teams, innovation tensions, paradox theory, multilevel effects