# Digital Twin Providing New Opportunities for Value Co-Creation through Supporting Decision-Making
## 6 Theoretical Implications
### Using Digital Twin Technologies to Support Value Co-Creation  
Based on the research question of how digital twin technologies can actually enhance value co-creation, we have seen from ten different digital twin cases that, independent of the degree of autonomy, they can indeed aid value co-creation. The digital twin supports the overall purpose or motivation [129] and provides information, along with alternative options or recommendations, in a form that supports decision-making between a number of actors within the system through the integration of resources and actors [129]. This allows the digital twin to then support the decision-making of other actors [141] who are able to integrate knowledge from outside the system boundaries with the information the twin provides, in effect moving into the domain of wisdom and allowing the actors who always retain final agency to make better-informed decisions. Interestingly, simulations based on the digital twins developed can provide value in terms of offering training opportunities or supporting the development of additional processes based on the scenarios that they can describe. Digital twins have been used in the past in PSS [92,142] and manufacturing [5,110]. However, the integration of S-D logic to explain technology-driven service innovation here is novel, and thus represents the major contribution of this paper to the current research. The systematic analysis of the wide variety of the use cases (as early concepts) provided an opportunity to understand and support the development of the digital twins in a systematic way, supported in the main by S-D logic. Managers reading the paper can find useful inspiration about the platforms that can be leveraged to different extents, to innovate manufacturing firms' service business. Applying the framework to operationalize S-D logic could help support the development of Smart Twins as it provides prompts that help digital twin designers understand the complex system and the actors around it. The digital twin is a tool that integrates insights from the various actors, from the system, translating the raw data into a form that can be considered as information by (individual) actors within the ecosystem and support them to make joint decisions and develop the system wisdom from the codified information [60,61]. The digital twin falls within the definition of a Smart Service System as defined by [PERSON] and [PERSON] [83]. For the value co-creation process, the aspects of governance are important in the development and operation of digital twins. Basic issues of granularity of the history, data privacy, system security, data/information access, and long-term maintenance were not considered in this paper. Moreover, also not fully analyzed was the importance of the \"real-time data\" requirement of a digital twin as used in the definition of [PERSON] et al. [3]. Reflections on the use cases suggest that the digital twin does not have to use \"real-time\" data to allow multi-actor decision-making, although this may be limited to more strategic and tactical decision-making. The authors also recognize the limitations of an \"orphaned\" digital twin when it comes to effective decision-making. The Digital Twin as a Tool to Provide New Opportunities for Value Co-Creation through Supporting Decision-Making  
Returning to the research question that formed the motivation for this study: the digital twin has provided new opportunities for supporting value co-creation through supporting decision-making. It has also provided a framework that has supported the co-creation of knowledge during the development phase; this was not something that the work had been planned around. The assessment criteria used have also been applied by the teams and therefore may have had an impact on the outcome of this study. The managerial issues that the digital twin supports are many and varied from simple planning advice, to more complex roles where delegated autonomy is required, or as a trainer.