Exploring the Role of IT in the Front-End of Innovation: An Empirical Study of IT-Enabled Creative Behavior

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Abstract

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.

Introduction

Creativity and innovation are related but distinct concepts; creativity is the production of original and valuable ideas by individuals and innovation is the implementation of those ideas by organizations (Amabile & Pratt, 2016). Creativity is the starting point for organizational innovation and it plays a significant role in the early stages of the innovation process (Bharadwaj & Menon, 2000). Creativity is therefore the essence of the front-end of innovation (Amabile & Pratt, 2016). Front-end of innovation (FEI) determines, to a great extent, subsequent phases in the innovation process (e.g., new product/process development, implementation, commercialization) (Brem & Voigt, 2009). However, it is not well understood and is therefore a concern for management (Brand, Tiberius, Bican, & Brem, 2019). IT can play multiple important roles during this key phase of innovation (Nambisan, 2013) and the role of IT in this important phase needs to be better theorized and understood (Gregor & Hevner, 2015).

As the essence of the FEI, individual creativity, or creative behavior, is important to understand. It is often a single member of the organization who comes up with possible solutions to an unmet need or a hidden problem, underscoring the salience of human behavior in the FEI (Amabile & Pratt, 2016; Gregor & Hevner, 2015; Koen et al., 2002). Creative behavior involves different activities, key among them are: generating ideas for solving problems (idea generation), developing and validating preferred ideas (idea elaboration), and communicating and promoting ideas to other members of the organization (idea championing) (Perry-Smith & Mannucci, 2017).

IS researchers have studied important aspects of creative behavior, paying special attention to idea generation (e.g., Althuizen & Reichel, 2016; Althuizen & Wiereng, 2014; Cheung, Chau, & Au, 2008; Thatcher & Brown, 2010). At the same time, limited attention has been given to the other activities—namely, idea elaboration and idea championing. This is an important issue because it hinders IS researchers' understanding of the broader role that IT can play in supporting creative behavior and, as a result, their ability to inform practice. Consequently, the objective of this study is to understand IT's role in supporting creative behavior, in its entirety, during the FEI.

The remainder of the paper is structured as follows. The next two sections discuss IS research on creative behavior and the paper's theoretical foundations, respectively. Following the theory development section, the paper presents empirical evidence that offers encouraging validation of the model. The paper concludes with a discussion of its key contributions and the avenues it opens for future research.

Section snippets

Is research on creative behavior

Prior research on individual creativity provides important insights with respect to IT's role in supporting creative behavior. For example, the manner in which information is presented to users can influence the quantity and quality of their ideas (Elam & Mead, 1990; MacCrimmon & Wagner, 1994; Potter & Balthazard, 2004). Similarly, access to knowledge repositories can enhance both the number of quality of ideas (Cheung et al., 2008). Further, a mixture of communication technologies can

Theoretical foundations

The componential theory of creativity (CTC) is a meta theory that can offer a broad view of the social and psychological components influencing creativity in an organizational context; it describes how individual-level components, as well as components in the work environment, influence employees' creative behavior (Amabile, 1983, Amabile, 2018; Amabile, Conti, Coon, Lazenby, & Herron, 1996). The CTC's assumptions regarding the conditions surrounding employees render it an applicable lens for

Theory development

In this section, we develop a model grounded in the aforementioned theoretical framework. The model links individual-level components—i.e., domain-relevant skills, creativity-relevant skills, and task motivation, which we redefine in the context of our study as IT mastery motivation—with perceptions regarding an organizational IT's capacity to enable idea generation, idea elaboration, and idea championing. The model further incorporates employees' experiences of their organizations' learning

Empirical assessment of the theoretical model

As a test of our theoretical development we carried forth a Web-based survey that was distributed by a professional survey company. Respondents were screened to ensure that they were employed, full-time, by an organization with at least ten employees and that has undergone an IT implementation within the past six months, and that they are users of that IT. Invitations to participate in the survey were sent to 1000 people and 337 complete and usable questionnaires were obtained. In line with our

Discussion

Employee creativity plays an important role in the success of contemporary organizations and it consists of idea generation, idea elaboration, and idea championing. Extant IS research on creative behavior has focused mainly on idea generation and its supporting technologies, leaving gaps in our understanding of the broader role of IT in supporting individual creativity.

To address this gap, this paper develops a theoretically-grounded model that describes the factors that shape employees'

Conflict of interest

None.

Author statement

We would like to send our revised manuscript (R1), for consideration for possible publication at Information and Organization. The paper has been revised according to the review team comments provided based on our original submission. We have addressed all the comments of the review team. The manuscript is not under publication consideration in any other journal or conference.

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  • We would like to send the manuscript, “ ORGANIZATIONAL IT AS A TOOL FOR INDIVIDUAL CREATIVITY: A STUDY OF IT-ENABLED IDEA GENERATION, ELABORATION, AND CHAMPIONING,” for consideration for possible publication at Information and Organization. The paper focuses on IT-enabled individual creativity at the workplace and develops a theoretical model grounded in the componential theory of creativity. The model is then tested using survey data. The paper contributes to the IS literature by going beyond prior research's focus on IT-enabled idea generation to examine all three activities of individual creativity - namely, idea generation, idea elaboration, and idea championing. In addition, the paper shifts attention to creativity with organizational IT thereby complementing extant research, which tends to study specialized technologies, designed for creativity enhancement.

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