16262: Category Research in the Digital Age

Monday, July 28, 2025

13:45 - 15:15 CEST (GMT+2)

Location: Bella Center: Hall A- A2-m2

Session Type: Symposium (panel)
Orientation: Practice,Research
Shareable link: https://cdmcd.co/PnYLz6

Organizer(s)

VH

Valerie Rashanthi Handunge

-, United Kingdom
MB

Michael Barrett

U. of Cambridge, United Kingdom
EO

Eivor Oborn

U. of Warwick, United Kingdom

Participant(s)

RG

Raghu Garud

Pennsylvania State U., United States
MK

Mark Kennedy

Imperial College London, United Kingdom
MK

Mukti Khaire

Cornell University, United States
LP

Lionel Paolella

U. of Cambridge, United Kingdom
NP

Neil Pollock

U. of Edinburgh business school

The convergence of category research and digital innovation offers fertile ground for exploring a wide array of critical topics, particularly in a world where digital technologies, artificial intelligence, blockchain, and big data analytics are upending and reconfiguring entire industries. The affordance of digital innovations, that is (1) the convergence – coming together of previously unrelated experiences, products, and industries and (2) the generativity – the capacity to produce unprompted change, create new questions for category researchers. In particular, digital innovation challenges normative distinctions between established categories; accelerates the pace at which new categories are created, evolve, and dissolve; and foster the emergence of novel categories. Additionally, digital phenomena, such as the gig economy, platformization, and crowdsourcing create rich new contexts for category research. In short, an evolving ontological context demands a re-examination of the foundational concepts of category research. This panel brings together leading scholars across two communities – category research and digital innovation to debate the influence of digital technologies on market categories and new frontiers in category research.