Creativity is not enough: ICT‐enabled strategic innovation

Abstract

Purpose

To show how information and communication technologies (ICTs) could help a company implement radical new strategies.

Design/methodology/approach

Generalizations are made based on 20 case studies of companies that strategically innovated in their industries by introducing radical new business models. Several of these cases are used in the paper to highlight the points made.

Findings

The paper shows that ICT enables firms to: reach consumers that most competitors cannot serve profitably; offer radically new value propositions to consumers that other firms cannot deliver in a cost‐efficient way; and put in place value chains that no other firm could do efficiently. ICT also allows strategic innovators to scale up their business models quickly and so protect themselves from competitive attacks.

Originality/value

This paper shows that coming up with a radical business model that breaks the rules of the game in an industry is easy! The difficult part is to implement such radical strategies in the marketplace so as to deliver real value to customers in a cost‐efficient and profitable way. The paper demonstrates that ICT is a key enabler in the successful implementation of radical new strategies.

Citation

Markides, C.C. and Anderson, J. (2006), "Creativity is not enough: ICT‐enabled strategic innovation", European Journal of Innovation Management, Vol. 9 No. 2, pp. 129-148. https://doi.org/10.1108/14601060610663532