Inside the Virtual Product: How Organisations Create Knowledge Through Software (New Horizons in the Economics of Innovation)

What is the influence of software systems on an organization's ability to create knowledge, learn adapt to change and innovate? While organization, management and innovation theory has primarily focused on the impact of software on measures such as process efficiency and speed, this book argues that integrated sytms and digital technologies offer even more fundamental implications for the innovating firm. A serious of detailed case studies provides the foundations for a deeper theoretical and empirical understanding of the nature and dynamics of software, knowledge, organization and their complex interactions. The author demonstrates how software induces the radical reconfiguration of organizational knowledge and learning dynamics, including an organization's ability to create, store, transfer and integrate knowledge across heterogenous organizational boundaries. The book provides a perspective on what organizations know and how they use that knowledge to build, sustain and renew their capabilities. This includes understanding how information systems can be designed or implemented in such a way as to favour innovation and adaptation, and to prevent unfavourable patterns of behaviour.