Managing Organizational Adoption of IoT : Revisiting Rogers' Diffusion of Innovation Theory

Abstract: As a disruptive innovation, IoT has been creating a high impact over organizations’ current strategies and business models. This continuous process of change will have an increasing influence on how organizations and industries as a whole conduct their businesses, and is set to have an active role towards the development of entirely new business models and markets. With the development of IoT technologies, and its predicted exponential spread across all sectors of society, one can conclude that the future holds many opportunities for organizations looking to explore new ways of capturing and creating value, but at the same time there are also plenty of challenges to be addressed. While the diffusion and adoption process of IoT has been an ongoing phenomenon over the past decade, there is still not much certitude as to how organizations ought to adjust in order to successfully integrate IoT technologies in their structure and operations. In parallel fashion, there have also been many difficulties in ensuring that different smart, connected devices and ecosystems are able to effectively communicate between each other, as achieving interoperability has become one of the major concerns associated with IoT. The main focus of this study is to analyze the process of how organizations are currently integrating IoT within their businesses, while also investigating causes that hinder interoperability, and evaluating the future potential deployment of the Open IoT ecosystems in companies. For our research we have followed a case-study approach where we conducted semi-structured interviews with managers and project leaders from two organizations conducting pilot studies on Green IoT and Open IoT, and where one has been adopting IoT technologies in its business. Theoretically, we draw on a framework by combining Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations theory and Christensen’s theory of Disruptive Innovations in order to analyze the integration of IoT into businesses’ core structure. The research goes through a functional framework that outlines the process of IoT adoption while also presenting the present challenges that are faced by the actors in the industry and the key enablers for successful IoT integration.