Delivering the undefined: The value potential of digital twins : A qualitative study on digital twins in the Swedish AEC/FM industry

Sammanfattning: The megatrend of digitalisation is transforming society, individuals, companies, and industries through the widespread adoption of new digital technologies. Among the emerging technologies, digital twin technology is regarded as a key enabler of digital transformation in the Architecture, Engineering, Construction, and Facility Management (AEC/FM) industry, where the transition from BIM to digital twins is primarily driven by the emergence of big data. One of the aspects of digitalisation is the ability to customise and create customer-tailored solutions using data, which highlights the importance of adopting human-centric approaches for companies. Service-Dominant (S-D) logic, a theoretical perspective originating from marketing and service science, is based on a customer-centric approach to value creation and emphasises the importance of co-creating value with customers. Currently, the research on digital twins in the AEC/FM industry remains limited, focusing mainly on the technical aspects of digital twins. Although previous research has attempted to bridge the gap regarding managerial implications of digital twins by placing them in the context of S-D logic, such research is still scarce and introductory. This master thesis aims to contribute to the expansion of the managerial perspective by exploring digital twins in the context of S-D logic, by viewing digital twins as a service and focusing on their value co-creation potential. This is achieved by employing a qualitative research method and conducting nine semi-structured interviews with the Swedish industry practitioners working with digital twin technology. Thematic analysis was employed to identify, analyse, and interpret patterns in the qualitative data. The findings indicate that the primary value of digital twins is found in the transformation of data into customisable digital services tailored to customers' goals and purposes, which allows for value co-creation between suppliers and customers. Furthermore, the study concludes that digital twins in the Swedish AEC/FM industry are perceived as digital service platforms. This perception of digital twins as digital service platforms can be referred to in terms of collaborative digital platforms, which allows to view digital twins in the context of platform economy and opens new perspectives for future research.