IT Innovation for Adaptability and Competitiveness addresses the topic of IT innovations that can further an organization's ability to adapt and be competitive. Thus we address the problem at an earlier starting point, that is, the emergence of something innovative in an organization, applied to that organization, and its process of being diffused and accepted internally.
Topics covered in the book include:

• The role of IT in organizational innovation,
  
• Innovating systems development & process,
  
• Assessing innovation drivers,
  
• Innovation adoption,
  
• New environments, new innovation practices.

This volume contains the edited proceedings of the Seventh Working Conference on IT Innovation for Adaptability and Competitiveness, which was sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Working Group 8.6 and held at Intel Corporation, Leixlip, Ireland in May-June 2004.

IFIP WG 8.6 has as its focus diffusion of technological innovation. In this conference we have solicited papers on the topic of IT innovations that can further an organization’s ability to adapt and be competitive. Thus we address the problem at an earlier starting point, that is, the emergence of something innovative in an organization, applied to that organization, and its process of being diffused and accepted internally.

A further extension of this would be the propagation of a successful innovation outside the originating organization as a product, service or example of technology use that builds the firm’s markets. In this discussion we are supposing that said innovations are indeed a contribution. In reality, an idea is only labeled an innovation once it is accepted. Before that time, it can be just an idea, a crackpot idea, a disturbance, obsession, distraction or dissatisfaction with the status quo. Many innovations are of course deliberately cultivated in research labs, but again their success is the determinant of their eventual designation as “innovative”.

Conversely, some ideas really are crackpot concoctions or technologies in search of a use that linger in the environment as potential innovations long after their use is discredited. Case in point: voice recognition software, which does have some applications but has been over hyped and over applied for about 20 years. Today some call centers won’t let users punch a single button on their telephone sets; they MUST tell the voice recognition program what they want. Some of these systems will revert to an operator if the voice recognition system doesn’t understand, while others will just hang up. We were relieved to note the following title in the March 5 Financial Times: “To speak to an operator, start swearing now.” Someone has developed an innovation to recognize user frustration and bypass the prior innovation of persistent automated voice “response”!