INforMATIoN sYsTEMs ANd INNovATIoN

A new Information System must be adopted before it can be used. New Information Systems can be seen as innovations and viewed through the lens of innovations theory. In this article I will argue that much Information Systems research falls into this category, and that its explanation could benefit from application of innovation theory. One of the difficulties facing any such investigation, however, is that not all of these innovations are adopted in the form in which they were proposed – not all are adopted without change, and many approaches to technological innovation have trouble in explaining this. I will propose that Innovation Translation, informed by Actor-Network Theory, can offer a useful way of examining technological innovations, and particularly in explaining adoptions involving only some parts of the innovation. In this article I give several examples of how I have used Innovation Translation to shed light onto various technological innovations.