Abstract
Digital twins are virtual images of physical objects which provide real-time simulations of operating scenarios, aiming to provide information which can facilitate decision making. However, despite the rapid development of digital twins, firms still struggle with technology implementation and benefits realisation. Management tends to provide resources and to oversee the realisation of benefits. However, firms are still unable to obtain many of the benefits of investment in digital twins. From a business and management perspective, it is crucial to ensure system implementation that solves a given problem with a valuable outcome or desired benefit. Prior research on digital twins suggests that creating valuable outcomes with a proper implementation process remains an enduring challenge for organisations. Moreover, companies are still unable to realise the benefits or obtain the expected benefits after the implementation. The main objective of this review is to identify and explore the specific factors that drive or hinder the implementation and the benefit realisation process in various industries and organisational contexts. This systematic literature review uses a quantitative analysis of 296 articles downloaded from the Scopus database. The analysis identifies fifteen research streams, which are organised into four groups, namely, the adoption, implementation, benefits, and application of digital twins. The research streams are comprehensively reviewed and presented. For each stream, the paper presents a number of sub-themes and highlights important findings and areas that may require further development. The article aims at providing a comprehensive understanding of the progress of IT adoption research and identifying existing research gaps and perspectives for areas for future research.