Co-materialization: Digital innovation dynamics in the offshore petroleum industry

Abstract

This paper empirically explores the concept of co-materialization to explain the digital innovation dynamics in offshore petroleum production. The central insight developed is that the very nature of subsurface processes and phenomena that may be monitored and controlled is transformed as offshore petroleum production is digitalized. The paper shows how digital technologies are intrinsic to this transformation as material reality and abstract concepts take on meaning together through digital technologies. The central dynamic driving this transformation is the process wherein digital technologies, physical phenomena, and work processes for monitoring and controlling these phenomena evolve together in continuous interplay. © 2012 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing.