Design Theory for Dynamic Complexity in Information Infrastructures: The Case of Building Internet

The Norwegian eHealth Platform: Development Through Cultivation Strategies and Incremental Changes

“…This seems to be a prudent strategy. Prior information infrastructures' literature has indicated that the successful development of information infrastructures such as the Internet, mobile phone platforms and healthcare-specific arrangements has been achieved by following similar strategies (Hanseth and Lyytinen 2010;Aanestad and Jensen 2011;Aanestad and Hanseth 2002). Our findings are specific to processes for advancing the development of infrastructures that are already in place, nevertheless, they are congruent with recent findings by Grisot et al (2014) that identified three different types of infrastructure innovation: in, of, on infrastructures.…”

The Anatomy of Digital Trade Infrastructures

“…One part of the challenge originates in the inertia of the installed base. The installed base refers to the pre-existing components of the DI that constitute the starting point for any development attempt; they include existing work practices, human resources, standards, technological artefacts and organizational commitment (Ciborra & Hanseth, 1998;Hanseth & Lyytinen, 2010;Monteiro & Hanseth, 1996). Because it is rarely possible in DI development to redesign the DI from scratch, development always "wrestles with the inertia of the installed base and inherits strengths and limitations from that base" (Star & Ruhleder, 1996, p. 113).…”

“…All successful infrastructures started small and evolved into large ones. Approaches for growing an infrastructure from an initial setup solving a very specific problem for a minor group of stakeholder, to a more generic solution that is adopted by a larger group of users include the creation of an 'attractor' (Braa, Macome et al 2001), adherence to design principles that enable growth (Hanseth & Lyytinen, 2010), incremental functional deployment (Aanestad and Jensen 2011), promotion of generative evolutionary mechanisms (Henfridsson & Bygstad, 2013) and the establishment of 'killer apps' (Eaton et al, 2014) for the active management of the growth of the installed base.…”

Introduction

“…The empirical material from the different cases is analysed through the information infrastructure perspective (Star and Ruhleder 1996;Hanseth and Lundberg 2001;Hanseth and Lyytinen 2010). Information Infrastructures go beyond self-contained IT applications as they span localities and temporal scales.…”