CORPORATE MUSEUM BETWEEN DIGITAL AND STRATEGY

This paper explores whether and how digital technologies shape the strategic use of corporate museum. Corporate museum is studied in academia in reference to diverse audience, with whom it can support the company to create a strong relation. In the creation of this emotional bond, digital technologies are becoming crucial while being increasingly studied in museums’ sector for audience development and audience engagement, also in light of COVID-19 emergency. Although the acknowledged potentiality of digital technologies, research has overlooked their role in the peculiar case of corporate museum, making it worth of investigation. Empirically, our paper is based on a multiple case-study over three Italian corporate museums relying on several data sources as interviews, formal documents, online visits and newspaper articles. Findings show that corporate museum becomes an “Ulysses polytropos”, a museum “of twists and turns”, thanks to digital technologies. Indeed, digital technologies allow corporate museum to twist its business nature and turn to cultural heritage sector. Specifically, digital technologies enable a strategy of audience’s expansion, and they push corporate museum to shift the business-related collection into heritage-based collection through sublimation of contents. With the present study, we aim to shed light on the role of digital technologies for strategic use of corporate museum and, more broadly, of industrial heritage sites.