How do a company’s information
technology competences
influence its ability to innovate?
Steven R. Gordon
Babson College, Babson Park, Massachusetts, USA, and
Monideepa Tarafdar
College of Business Administration, University of Toledo, Toledo, Ohio, USA
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe research that explores how an organization’s
information technology (IT) competences influence its ability to innovate.
Design/methodology/approach – This paper draws on prior research to describe stages of the
innovation process and to identify several IT competences that have been linked to innovation success.
Then, examining innovation at three case study sites, it demonstrates how IT competences can
influence the success of innovation at various stages of the innovation process.
Findings – The paper finds that IT competences in information and knowledge management, project
management, collaboration and communication, and business involvement are likely to improve an
organization’s ability to innovate.
Research limitations/implications – The research in this paper is exploratory. The small number
of cases limits one’s ability to claim that the IT competences one has identified always affect
innovation.
Practical implications – The paper shows that organizations that want to be innovative should
cultivate the identified IT competences.
Originality/value – For researchers, the paper proposes a model relating an organization’s ability to
innovate to its IT competences. For managers, it identifies it competences that should be cultivated to
support the process of innovation.
Keywords Competences, Resources, Innovation, Knowledge management, Research
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Information technology (IT) has been touted as providing many benefits to companies
that use it well. For example, studies show that IT may increase product quality
(Thatcher and Pingry, 2004), improve workflow (Buhler and Vidal, 2005), enhance a
company’s flexibility to respond to customer needs (Gunasekaran and Ngai, 2004), and
improve communication between a company and its customers and suppliers (Fiala,
2005). One likely but rarely mentioned benefit of IT is its role in keeping companies
innovative. Despite the incorporation of IT components into many innovative products
and services, the role of IT in helping companies become and stay innovative remains
unclear. On the one hand, IT could encourage and support innovation by means such
as improving innovators’ ability to collaborate with one another and search for
relevant information and knowledge. On the other hand, IT and information systems
could stifle creativity and innovation by standardizing, automating, and
institutionalizing existing processes and workflow. Companies need to understand
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/1741-0398.htm
Information
technology
competences
271
Journal of Enterprise Information
Management
Vol. 20 No. 3, 2007
pp. 271-290
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
1741-0398
DOI 10.1108/17410390710740736