Digital innovation: essential characteristics and features

Digitalization has acquired a total socio-economic nature, which means that digital innovations have had a large-scale effect in the economy: they play the role of basic, industry-forming, and developing innovations as the pace of product restock and business process improvement increases. The actual situation requires understanding the essence of digital innovations, their technological features and resource capabilities in achieving economic progress. The subject area of the study is the field of management in its general economic and applied context. The latter is considered from the standpoint of substantiating and making managerial decisions to ensure digital transformation. The information and analytical review carried out by the authors allows us to state that the theory of digital innovation is in the process of accumulating knowledge and developing scientific schools. In the works of foreign and Russian scientists, there is a clear convergence of ideas of digitalization and innovative development of the economy, the effect of which is substantiated by an assessment of the potential of open innovations and network forms of organizing innovative activities, creating innovative ecosystems that operate using information and communication technologies in their digital format. A digression into economic practice proves an equal interest in scientific substantiations, developments and solutions in the real and financial sectors of the economy, with appropriate institutional support from the state regulation system. The object of this study is digital innovation; the subject of the study is the essential characteristics of digital innovation, determining approaches and methods of their management. The essence of digital innovation, that is the innovation ensured by the use of digital information technologies, is revealed by the authors from the perspective of their refined concept of the digital economy as an economic structure, which presupposes the widespread formation of digital competencies at the level of economic systems and their implementation in justifying management decisions. The characteristic features of the digital economy are: data-centric approach to decision making; dynamic competitive landscape, customer-centricity, platform business models with an ecosystem perspective. In substantiating the essential characteristics of digital innovation, the authors proceed from an understanding of the rational nature of the modern organization of innovation activity. Within the framework of the article, the terminological apparatus was clarified by introducing the author’s interpretation of the categories “digital economy” and “digital innovation”; the relationship between them is identified and justified; the basic characteristics of digital innovations and their specific features are determined.