The influence of Digital Skills on Project Innovation Success

Abstract

Digital skills assist organizations to maintain competitive advantages and increase innovation capacity in a fast-changing digital economy. Although digital skills are growing in importance, research that examine the influence of these skills on projects, specifically, innovation projects, are found to be scant, creating a knowledge gap. The focus of this research is the identification of digital skills clusters that would impact project innovation success. Therefore, the aim is to investigate those skills clusters and ascertain if they influence project innovation success in the UAE. Various literatures were reviewed to identify digital skills clusters that would impact project success as well as identify project innovation success factors, which are the desired outcomes for employing digital skills. For the research methodology, a quantitative approach was used by conducting a survey questionnaire of those working in project management profession or innovation or information technology. The survey aimed to gather data that would answer research hypotheses regarding the various relationships between digital skills clusters and project innovation success. The data was analyzed using statistical analyses such as correlation and regression, to identify relationships. The five core digital skills clusters that were identified from literature were technical skills, information skills, communication and collaboration skills, content-creation skills and problem-solving skills. In which, each cluster consists of several variables. This research has filled knowledge gap since it addressed the interplay between the three disciplines of digital literacy (skills), project management and innovation management, through grouping the different types of digital skills into clusters then identifying the influence or contribution of each cluster towards innovation success in projects. In addition to ranking the importance of each cluster and identifying the most influential factors. The results show that digital skills clusters have positive impact on project innovation success. It is recommended for organizations to upgrade their digital skills and fill skills gap to become innovation leaders and boost their performance.