Digital business research has generated a wide range of capability concepts to explain how firms compete, innovate, adapt, and learn in technology-intensive environments. Yet these concepts often appear under overlapping labels, including digital capabilities, analytics capabilities, platform capabilities, operational capabilities, and dynamic capabilities. This proliferation has enriched the field but has also made it difficult to compare findings across studies. The central problem addressed in this article is the absence of a coherent taxonomy for digital business capabilities. Without clear classification rules, researchers may treat different capabilities as equivalent, while managers may invest in digital resources without understanding which capability category they are actually developing. This ambiguity weakens conceptual precision, measurement design, and strategic capability development. The objective of the article is to develop an original taxonomy that classifies digital business capabilities into four distinct categories. These categories are Customer Intelligence, Operational Agility, Platform Coordination, and Strategic Learning. Each category is defined by a distinct value-creation logic, resource orientation, temporal focus, and managerial purpose. The resulting taxonomy identifies four mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive categories of digital business capabilities. It defines the sub-dimensions of each category, explains how the categories differ, and provides tables that support classification, comparison, and managerial application. The taxonomy offers a shared language for scholars and practitioners seeking to analyse, measure, and develop digital business capabilities with greater precision.
Institute for Management, Business, and Accounting Studies