Alternative Designs in Widespread Innovation Adoption: Empirical Evidence from Enterprise Architecture Implementation in US State Governments

The dominant design theory posits that widespread innovation adoption, at least for product innovations, happens when a vendor shakeout occurs and subsequently a dominant design of the product emerges. This paper examines how the dominant design theory holds for non-product innovations: could we expect widespread adoption to occur with alternative designs? Through the widespread adoption of Enterprise Architecture in fifty US state governments, we illustrate that both premises of the dominant design theory do not apply well. Despite the widespread adoption of Enterprise Architecture, there is no sign of a shakeout in the vendor community, nor any sign of a dominant design implemented among state governments. On the contrary, alternative designs may have been more helpful to the diffusion process of Enterprise Architecture. The findings suggest research opportunities to look at organizational profiles that promote certain innovation designs, or to identify conditions and trajectories under which alternative designs are plausible.