Interrelating strategy and architecture moves: a clinical inquiry into a strategic digital initiative

Although research emphasizes strategy and technology concerns in organizational digitalization, we have limited understanding of how digital initiatives interrelate these concerns over time. Against this backdrop, we conducted a clinical inquiry into the Connected Restroom Initiative at Georgia-Pacific with its trajectory through four stages: idea-focused initiation, technology-focused experimentation, customer-focused commercialization, and process-focused consolidation. Empirically, we offer a detailed account of how the initiative iteratively orchestrated strategy moves of competitive positioning, resource reconfiguration, and organizational renewal together with architecture moves of event sensing, trace analysis, and platform co-creation within and across its stages. Conceptually, we draw on these insights and extant literature to develop a grounded model of how the initiative dynamically interrelated strategy and architecture moves as a structured, incremental response to the dynamic business landscapes in which it unfolded. We conclude with a discussion of implications for theory, practice, and clinical IS research.