The diffusion of IP telephony and vendors' commercialisation strategies

This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in the Journal of Information Technology. The definitive publisher-authenticated version is available at the link below.The Internet telephony (IP telephony) has been presented as a technology that can replace existing fixed-line services and disrupt the telecommunications industry by offering new low-priced services. This study investigates the diffusion of IP telephony in Denmark by focusing on vendors’ commercialisation strategies. The theory of disruptive innovation is introduced to investigate vendors’ perceptions about IP telephony and explore their strategies that affect the diffusion process in the residential market. The analysis is based on interview data collected from the key market players. The study's findings suggest that IP telephony is treated as a sustaining innovation that goes beyond the typical voice transmission and enables provision of advanced services such as video telephony

Co-evolution of an emerging mobile technology and mobile services : a study of the distributed governance of technological innovation through the case of WiBro in South Korea

This thesis is a study of the development and uptake of an emerging infrastructural technology: the mobile Wireless Broadband technology and service known as WiBro in South Korea, and Mobile WiMAX internationally. WiBro has emerged through a national development effort since the early 2000s. The commercial service was launched in 2006. However, uptake fell far below initial expectations, only succeeding in niche markets. This study was motivated by concerns about the perceived gulf between development and diffusion and the ‘failure’ of WiBro. However, this study seeks to go beyond the technology-driven perspective that informs conceptions of diffusion gap: it aims to explicate the sociotechnical factors leading to such a gap. This study draws on Science and Technology Studies (STS) and in particular the Social Shaping of Technology (SST) perspective, which provides tools to scrutinize the interactions among the various interests and factors involved in the process of technological innovation. The SST perspective goes beyond approaches that treat technology as a static object to be developed and diffused. It provides tools to examine the complex and dynamic forces that develop technical capacity towards particular forms and uses. The ‘social learning’ perspective extends SST and provides concepts to explore the changing dynamics over multiple cycles of innovation. Here, Jørgensen’s concept of ‘development arena’ helps examine the interlinked, yet dispersed and multiple spaces in which differing goals, motivations and strategies of innovation players together shape technological innovation. Through comprehensive analyses of a longitudinal study of WiBro, a broader view of the process and the outcomes of technological innovation have been achieved. Rather than viewing the technology as a stable object that would progress in a linear manner through the stages of design, development, and diffusion, it has focused on the process of shaping of WiBro through multiple cycles of innovation. Several arenas of innovation were identified as diverse players sought to align their interests towards exploiting the resources, capacities, and tools for innovation that seemed to be available. In these spaces, conflicting and yet coevolving dynamics were observed: one involving coordination through alignments of multiple interests, and the other incorporating tensions and misalignments among the differing concerns, aims and commitments towards the innovation. The complex dynamics involved a multi-level game where the collective actions among the innovation players and their individual strategies diverged to a degree. Furthermore, changing contingencies, linked to shifting choices of innovation players, resulted in the deviation of the innovation from the initial visions and aims. The study thus illustrates the outcomes of highly divergent interactions at play in innovation process and the mutual enrollment efforts of players that constituted the distributed governance of innovation. Here the complex interplays among the innovation players involved in multi-level games produced a gap between the generic vision and the actual uptake of WiBro. Changing contingencies, especially linked to broader and evolving structures and relations - brought about the reshaping of the generic vision of WiBro. This research therefore suggests the concept of the ‘distributed governance of innovation’ as a new mode for governance: that accommodates not only differing knowledges and interests but also the shifting choices and visions through the various cycles of technological innovation. The boundary of social learning is thus extended to incorporate diverging choices over time and across the multiple spaces of innovation. Its implications for policy include achieving reflexivity by incorporating into the policy framework the learning process that takes place as the innovation players go through the varying stages and cycles of technological innovation

WiMax technology adoption by SMEs in the city of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.This research focuses on developing a framework for Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMax) technology adoption by Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). WiMax has emerged as a technology to overcome the limitations of traditional and existing broadband technologies and support a great number of organisations and consumers/citizens in providing a higher speed over substantial distances i.e. in areas that are difficult for wired infrastructure to reach. Despite all the interest in the types of broadband adoption as demonstrated by SMEs in several countries, there seems to be slow progress and lack of information supporting the decision making process for WiMax technology adoption by SMEs specifically in the context of KSA. This may illustrate that SMEs adopt WiMax technology solutions at a slower pace and make them characterised as laggards in terms of new technologies adoption. This research takes into consideration this literature gap and makes a step forward and investigates on WiMax technology adoption by SMEs in KSA with an organisational cultural view, vendors’ commercialisation strategies and government policies by analysing the normative literature related to this research. The data collection of this study was carried out in two phases including quantitative and qualitative approaches. The first phase of the research provided results indicated that, the Saudi SMEs who participated in this research are strongly dominated by clan culture and adhocracy culture. These cultures also have a positive impact on the Internet technologies adoption such as WiMax by SMEs. It is found that, the combination of clan and adhocracy cultures in Saudi SMEs is making them more likely to adopt latest Internet technologies. In the second phase, the results showed a wide difference in views among SMEs, WiMax vendors and government agencies involved in WiMax technology diffusion to SMEs in Saudi Arabia. Although WiMax technology started as an innovation that has the potential to be disruptive and could replace the widely diffused fixed wire line Internet connection, the research findings showed an interesting deviation from this path. In particular, the WiMax technology market analysis in Saudi Arabia highlighted the vendors’ tendency to treat WiMax technology as a sustaining innovation. Research findings also indicated that, the Saudi government provided funds for Information and Communications Technology‘s diffusion in the country. However, the level of awareness displayed by SMEs is persistently low. Knowledge deployment, mobilisation, innovation directive and subsidy have been emphasised by SMEs as the most important government interventions that might have an impact on WiMax adoption by them. Finally, further important issues have been uncovered by the research such as taxation, experience exchange, herd culture/bandwagon, consumer right protection and customer service in relation to the adoption of WiMax by SMEs. The perceived future prospect of these additional issues has been considered as an influence on adoption of WiMax technology by SMEs. The findings of this research can be useful to guide analysts and researchers in determining critical aspects of the complex issues involved in technologies adoption, and lead to suggestions for further valid research

Starting-up an IT-enabled Disruptive Innovation: A Stage Model

Disruptive innovations better business performance and society. Scholars have claimed that IT disruptive innovations have revolutionised how firms conduct their business and how people shape their daily chores. We discover how an emerging start-up company (goCatch) achieves a revolutionary and leading edge application system for the taxi industry from inception. This paper explains how goCatch manages its technology and unique business, whilst developing a mobile application and disrupting a virtually monopolistic incumbent. We present a stage model of IT-enabled application development start-up. The contributions of the model are two-fold. First, for theory in understanding how start-ups can deliver a disruptive innovation. Second, for entrepreneurial practice to gain a processual understanding of how these innovations are developed

De-commodifying software? Open source software between business strategy and social movement

"Focusing on open source software the origin, development and organisation of a process of de-commodification is examined in an industry that usually relies on strong provisions to protect intellectual property. Open source denotes a cooperative and voluntary mode of software development cross-cutting organisational boundaries and transcending relations of market exchange. Starting with the Open Systems Movement in the late 1970s, which was driven by business strategic and industrial policy interests and complemented by a spirit of mutual support in professional communities, a social movement type of collective action has emerged which develops knowledge as a public good. Competent communities share the norms of the hacker culture and cooperate in informal relations challenging the boundaries between private and public goods. But the open source idea has also been transformed into a business strategy by companies who provide basic software products for free and make money with complementary products and services." (author's abstract