The front-end of innovation (FEI) is critical for successful innovation in contemporary organizations. Employee creativity, or creative behavior, is at the heart of the FEI and it encompasses three activities: idea generation, idea elaboration, and idea championing. Information technology (IT) can play an important role in enabling these activities but extant research has focused primarily on IT-enabled idea generation. This paper complements the extant research by examining the entire set of activities that compose FEI. Specifically, we develop a model that examines IT-enabled idea generation, IT-enabled elaboration and IT-enabled championing, and that, grounded in the componential theory of creativity, analyzes their key drivers. An empirical study establishes the applicability of the model. The paper contributes to IS research and practice by shedding light on the tripartite role that organizational IT can play in employee creativity, and it serves as a springboard for future research.

创新的前端（FEI）对于当代组织的成功创新至关重要。员工的创造力或创造行为是FEI的核心，它包括三项活动：想法产生，想法阐述和想法倡导。信息技术（IT）在实现这些活动方面可以发挥重要作用，但是现有的研究主要集中在基于IT的想法产生上。本文通过检查构成FEI的整个活动集对现有研究进行补充。具体来说，我们开发了一个模型，该模型检查了IT支持的想法生成，IT支持的阐述和IT支持的倡导，并基于创造力的组成部分理论分析了其主要驱动力。实证研究确定了该模型的适用性。