Legitimation of Newness Challenges and Opportunities in the 6G Era

Mobile communication networks are the digitalization backbone of modern society. This study employs the futures scenario method to explore legitimation challenges and opportunities in the sixth-generation mobile communications (6G) era. Specifically, this conceptual paper discusses scenarios against the legitimation of newness and business models and their implications for research, practice, and policy. We conjecture that the most probable scenario in the future of 6G stems from industry legitimation, strong established stakeholders, and competition as a driver. Trust and privacy were found as the key challenges and limitations were related to adopted centralized platform business models in this scenario. The preferred scenario was driven by novel service performance innovations combined with sociopolitical sustainability goals. This scenario was seen to have challenges related to novel open business models and be limited by the traditional regulatory environment. The findings indicate that it is vital to bring together stakeholders within the ecosystem and pay special attention to identity-construction legitimation via an open, ecosystem-focused value configuration and decentralized poly-nodal power configurations.