IT-ENABLED BUSINESS INNOVATION: DOES CIO CAPABILITY MATTER? A PERSPECTIVE FROM INSTITUTIONAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP THEORY

Today IT has evolved from a mere efficiency tool to enabling business innovation and providing strategic value. As the highest level IT leader in organizations, CIO should be largely responsible for the success of IT-enabled business innovation. CIO must possess necessary skills, knowledge, and abilities to lead IT staff, business partners, and even high-level executives in IT-enabled business innovation. However, as IT innovation researchers have just begun to look at business transformation and innovation resulted from the application of new IT, insights on how CIO can leverage IT to enable business innovation are still scant. We aim to address the question of whether and how CIO capability impact on the success of IT-enabled business innovation. Anchoring on the theory of institutional entrepreneurship, we propose a conceptual model describing that CIO’s political savvy, communicative ability, strategic IT and business knowledge have positive impact on the success of ITenabled business innovation, through the mediating role of innovation legitimacy. The findings are expected to provide several theoretical implications for the areas of IT innovation and CIO effectiveness

The Relationship between Technology, Innovation, and Firm Performance: Empirical Evidence on E-Business in Europe

This article analyzes the relationship between the usage of Internet-based technologies, different types of innovation, and performance at the firm level. Data for the empirical investigation originates from a sample of 7,302 European enterprises. The empirical results show that Internet-based technologies were an important enabler of innovation in the year 2003. It was found that all studied types of innovation, including Internet-enabled and non-Internet-enabled product or process innovations, are positively associated with turnover and employment growth. Firms that rely on Internet-enabled innovations are at least as likely to grow as firms that rely on non-Internet-enabled innovations. Finally, it was found that innovative activity is not necessarily associated with higher profitability. Possible reasons for this and implications are discussed.firm performance;innovation;information technology;profitability;e-business

HOW DOES INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ENABLE INNOVATION IN SUPPLY CHAINS?

The paper explores a mechanistic understanding of IT-enabled innovation in a context of supply chain. Based on the innovation dynamics perspective and resource-based view, it links IT resources for supply chain management and IT-enabled innovation via e-business capability with supply chain partners. A conceptual model is formulated to explain how and why IT can enable product and process innovations along the supply chain, and is empirically validated by the data from 676 manufacturing firms in six countries. It was found that IT resources for supply chain management are capable of achieving IT-enabled innovation through both upstream and downstream e-business capability to collaborate with suppliers and customers. The paper contributes to the literature of digitally enabled supply chain management and IT business value. It also allows important managerial implications to firms, especially those in manufacturing sector, about how to chase IT-enabled innovation in supply chains to overcome today’s depression

Leveraging IT for Business Innovation: Does the Role of the CIO Matter?

The evolving role of Information Technology (IT) in business innovation places increasing emphasis on the role of the Chief Information Officer (CIO). Yet, the role of the CIO in business innovation is understudied in the extant literature. Drawing on organizational theory of boundary spanning leadership, we posit that the CIO’s cross-functional role pertaining to entities and functions outside the IT organization help explain the firm’s propensity for IT-enabled business innovation. Our large-sample empirical analysis of U.S. firms largely supports our theoretical propositions. We empirically find that IT-enabled business innovation is more likely when the CIO reports to the Chief Executive Officer, has more interactions with the firm’s customers and is more involved in new product development. This study contributes to our understanding of the role of the CIO in IT-enabled business innovation and provides implications for practice

Business school techspectations Technology in the daily lives and educational experiences of business students

Business School Techspectations is the second in a series of reports based on research by the DCU Leadership, Innovation and Knowledge Research Centre (LInK) at DCU Business School. With its roots in an Irish business school, it is no surprise that LInK’s mission is to strengthen the competitiveness, productivity, innovation and entrepreneurial capacity of the Irish economy. Ireland’s next generation transformation will be enabled by information and communication technologies (ICT) and digital participation by members of Irish society. As a university research centre we have an important role to play in supporting education, industry and government to accelerate this transformation

How SaaS Application Led To Cloud Enabled Business Innovation: A Case Study from China

Although cloud computing is increasingly viewed as a catalyst for business innovation, many executives wonder whether and how it can enable the emergence of new business opportunities. This research-inprogress case study presents the business drivers and implementation of a leading telecommunication carrier from China in revolutionizing its SaaS application to a cloud enabled service platform in its innovation to develop a multisided platform business model. The preliminary implicatons from the case reveal that to gain value from cloud enabled business innovation, firms need to develop business strategies based on four key elements: customer needs probing, value proposition positioning, cloud enabled platform construction, and ecosystem development

You'll Be Surprised - Digital Business Strategy as Driver of Organizational Innovativeness

The presence of digital infrastructures fundamentally changes market conditions, business and IT strategy, and consequently organizational structures. This research investigates how the concept of a digital business strategy leads to increased organizational innovativeness and firm performance. We demonstrate how IT capabilities contribute to organizational innovativeness and induce the CIO’s positive role for IT-enabled business innovation. By means of an online survey among 228 IT decision makers in knowledge-intensive industries in the U.S., the results reveal organizational innovativeness being significantly higher influenced by the IT knowledge of business employees in organizations giving the digital business strategy high importance, whereas the top management team IT knowledge plays a greater role when digital business strategy is given low priority. By this research, we deliver first results of consequences for organizations conducting a digital business strategy and contribute to the discussion on IT-enabled innovation, CIO leadership, and the increasing relevance of organization-wide IT capabilities

Need for Speed in the Sharing Economy: How IT capability drives Innovation Speed?

Though innovation is considered to be the lifeblood of business, speed of innovation is more critical than innovation itself. IT plays a critical role in the process of open innovation as it is based upon collaborating with suppliers and customers. IT enables increased collaboration and generation of insights across the firm’s partner network. We examine the role of IT-enabled capabilities in determining the speed of innovation. We hypothesize that collaboration with customers is more effective than collaboration with suppliers for firms to speedily innovate. Further, a firm’s digital collaboration with customers is more effective when Business Intelligence systems are used. Econometric analyses of data from 249 U.S. firms yields strong support for our hypotheses. While both customer-side and supplier- side digital collaboration are positively associated with innovation speed, the effect of customer-side digital collaboration on innovation speed is stronger. Furthermore, Business Intelligence systems use amplifies the effect of customer-side digital collaboration

Business Innovation and Differentiation: Maturing the IT Capability

The IT Capability Maturity Framework (IT-CMF) determines an organization’s current and desired level of IT capability maturity and supports planning for improvement. Through capability improvement initiatives, organizations can more readily realize sustainable advantages through IT-enabled business innovation and differentiation

IT-enabled business practices: Empirical investigations of productivity and innovation

My dissertation centers on the impact of information technology (IT) investments on business processes. I seek to understand the way organizations use software to share information with partners in trade and facilitate innovation. Information-sharing IT and process innovation are complementary under the right circumstances, and understanding why and how the strategic use of software impacts organizations has wide-ranging implications, from supply-chain structure to understanding the contribution of the manufacturing sector to the national economy. The first chapter of my dissertation uses proprietary Census data to investigate the impact of e-selling on total factor productivity (TFP). I find that although large plants see a TFP increase related to e-selling, small plants do not. This highlights the need to understand economies of scale related to IT within organizations. The second chapter of my dissertation is an investigation into complementarities between IT and a firm’s research and development (R&D) efforts. While there has been considerable attention paid to IT as a complement to firm capabilities, there is less work examining complementarities between IT and other inputs to innovation. This research represents a novel investigation into the relationship between IT investments and a firm’s innovative strategy.Ph.D