Knowing why and how to innovate with packaged business software

When firms move to adopt and implement a popular IT innovation, what knowledge must they have or gain, in order to be successful? Here we offer a model that explains a firm’s success in terms of its adoption know-why and know-when and its implementation knowhow. We examine this model in an exploratory survey of some 118 firms’ adoption and implementation of packaged business software in the 1990s. Using multivariate methods, we identify business coordination as know-why and management understanding and vendor support as know-how factors important to success, explaining nearly 60% of the variance. There is limited evidence that the right adoption know-why may help in acquiring or fostering the right implementation know-how. The findings serve to remind practitioners that they should attend carefully to adoption rationales, grounded in business benefits, when they innovate with new IT. Journal of Information Technology (2005) 20, 20–31. doi:10.1057/palgrave.jit.2000033 Published online 8 February 2005