Institutionalising the digital transition: The role of digital innovation intermediaries

We examine how digital innovation intermediaries, mandated to support the digital transition as part of digital policy agendas, engage in institutional work to facilitate the adoption and diffusion of digital technologies. Building on neoinstitutional theory and the socio-technical transitions literature, our investigation aims to uncover intermediaries' institutional work on cultural-cognitive, normative, and regulative institutions across three levels of intermediation: organisation-, network- and ecosystem level. Based on a large evidence base related to 18 publicly-funded digital innovation intermediaries in France, including primary and secondary sources, we uncover the various forms of institutional work intermediaries engage in while facilitating the digital transition. We find that intermediaries' institutional work focuses on disrupting symbolic systems, creating relational systems and artefacts, and creating and maintaining routines. Intermediaries carry out different kinds of institutional work at different levels of intermediation. Furthermore, different types of intermediaries focus on distinct levels of intermediation and different institutions. Implications for policy and management are discussed. • We study how innovation intermediaries carry out institutional work to support the digital transition. • We show that intermediaries engage in disrupting, creating and maintaining institutions. • Different types of intermediaries perform different kinds of institutional work. • Intermediation takes place at organisation-, network-, and ecosystem level.