Preaching the Gospel: The Evangelists of New Technology

Key Role Players in the Initiation and Implementation of Intranet Technology

“…Once the sponsor has taken "ownership" of the technology, the role of the technology champion disappears into the background (Orlikowski et al 1995). Beatty and Gordon (1991) describe the role of the organizational sponsor in subsequent implementation stages as that of a "godfather" who empowers and supports agents of this change in the organization.…”

“…Change agents come into play to effect the implementation of a new information technology (Beatty and Gordon 1991;Markus and Benjamin 1996;Orlikowski et al 1995). These agents play a key role in spreading the new information technology to organizational actors.…”

Developing communities of innovation by identifying innovation champions

“…A 1996 study (Melcrum 2006 quoting Business Horizons) of 150 major US firms found that innovative companies had a profit growth that was four times that of non-innovative companies. The presence of innovation champions makes a decisive contribution to the innovation by actively and enthusiastically promoting its progress (Archilladelis et al 1971 p14), and a number of research projects have correlated the presence of such champions with successful innovations (Beath, 1991;Beatty & Gordon, 1991;Holbeck, 1990). They tend to emerge informally in an organisation (Schön 1965;Tushman and Nadler 1986) which makes it difficult to routinely identify them.…”

“…A number of authors have identified that innovation champions are natural entrepreneurs (Beatty & Gordon, 1991;Pinchot, 1985). Coulson-Thomas (2003) identifies the presence of Knowledge Entrepreneurs in an organisation as being those who innovate knowledge and knowledge sharing activities and this would also fit with the idea of innovation champions within a CoInv.…”

“…Entrepreneurs (Ekvall, 1988) are individuals who seek freedom and Kets de Vries (1977) identifies them as being innovative. Champions will also have analytical and technical skills (Beatty & Gordon, 1991), as well as knowledge both in the specific (and thus be knowledge entrepreneurs) but also in the generic (Chakrabarti, 1974) organisational situation and environment. This knowledge will come from experience as detailed above and is often a pre-requisite for innovation (Pearson, 1988).…”