Early vs. late adoption of radical information technology innovations across software development organizations: an extension of the disruptive information technology innovation model

This paper extends the disruptive information technology innovation model (DITIM) by exploring the impact of adoption timing on innovation outcomes within software development organizations during a disruptive innovation cycle. The DITIM suggests that radical changes in computing platforms result in pervasive and radical innovations in software development organizations across three innovation types: base technologies adopted, services produced and processes adopted. Upstream attributes (amount and radicalness) of the base innovations impact effects in-kind downstream (a.k.a., strong order effects) on services and processes. Extending these tenets of the DITIM, we posit that during disruptive information technology (IT) innovation, the temporal stage of innovation activity (early vs. late) by software development organizations will significantly impact four innovation characteristics: (1) adoption rate of radical IT innovations, (2) strong order effects on downstream innovations related to the amount of innovation, (3) perceived radicalness of innovations and (4) strong order effects on downstream innovations related to the amount of perceived radicalness of innovation. We examine these impacts by reanalysing a cross-sectional study of 121 software development organizations that adopted internet computing as reported in the original data analysis of the DITIM. By splitting the data into early and late adopter groups, our moderation analysis shows significant differences rofessor of Information Systems. ontributed equally to this paper. This paper is dedicated in memory of our friend and colleague arlo and is her final manuscript.