Realizing the unexpected: How cospecialization supports the serendipity journey in SMEs’ digital transformation

Although innovation is often portrayed as arising deterministically from deliberate strategy and calculated decisions, many significant breakthroughs emerge not from planning but serendipitously. Building on this insight, this paper bridges the literatures on dynamic capabilities and serendipity to examine how SMEs realize serendipitous value during digital transformation (DT). Drawing on 21 semi-structured interviews with 11 top managers from four digitally transformed manufacturing SMEs, it was explored how these companies attempted to navigate the serendipity journey, comprising triggering, association, materialization, and realization. The findings show that cospecialization, a microfoundation of dynamic capabilities, conditions the unfolding of serendipitous events in the context of DT. Cospecialization fosters the coordinated association of complementary assets, resources, and capabilities in the wake of change driven by digital technologies, enabling businesses to sustain momentum from initial triggers through the materialization and realization of serendipitous opportunities. We develop a process model to illustrate how SMEs harness situated agency to move from unexpected triggers to realized value through the unfolding dynamics of the serendipity journey.