Knowing why and how to innovate with packaged business software

When firms move to adopt and implement a popular IT innovation, what knowledge must they have or gain, in order to be successful? Here we offer a model that explains a firm's success in terms of its adoption know-why and know-when and its implementation know-how. We examine this model in an exploratory survey of some 118 firms' adoption and implementation of packaged business software in the 1990s. Using multivariate methods, we identify business coordination as know-why and management understanding and vendor support as know-how factors important to success, explaining nearly 60% of the variance. There is limited evidence that the right adoption know-why may help in acquiring or fostering the right implementation know-how. The findings serve to remind practitioners that they should attend carefully to adoption rationales, grounded in business benefits, when they innovate with new IT.