Exploring IT-enabled innovation: A new paradigm?

Innovation is a major strategic issue for many organizations. This paper reports on findings from 10 case studies of successful IT-enabled innovation covering a wide range of organizations and projects. They were carried out as an exploratory study to identify practices that contribute to innovation and specifically consider the implications of a focus on innovation for earlier work on benefits-led approaches to IT.The research identifies a number of practices from benefits-led approaches to IT that contribute to IT-enabled innovation. There is also evidence of organizations developing a new practice of ideation drawing on ‘crowd sourcing’ and exploiting social media technologies. Existing principles and practices for benefits realization can contribute to innovation, but the practices have to be applied in different ways according to the context.The overall conclusion emerging from the detailed analysis is that a focus on IT-enabled business innovation represents a new paradigm in terms of the mindset and approach involved. It amounts to a third IT paradigm, different from previous paradigms of technology implementation and a planned approach to benefits realization. Further work is required to explore this paradigm and how organizations can make the ‘paradigm shift’ required.

► IT-enabled business innovation is important for explore and exploit activities.
► Practices for agile and benefits-led approaches to IT can contribute to innovation.
► Organizations are rapidly establishing a new practice for ideation.
► In many cases leadership for innovation is outside the IT function.
► IT innovation is a new paradigm, not new methods and practices.