Lightweight IT

Business Value Creation with IT (BVC)

Andy Weeger

Neu-Ulm University of Applied Sciences

March 4, 2024

Generative innovation

Generativity defined

Generativity in technology refers to cases where a technology supports the creation of novel products.

What are examples of generative technologies?

Generativity

Generativity refers to the basic idea that the observed complexity of a phenomenon¹ can be traced back to some basic elements and their mechanisms for interaction (Phelan 2001).

Generative technology is defined as “a technology’s overall capacity to produce unprompted change driven by large, varied, and uncoordinated audiences” (Zittrain 2006).

Generativity is an emergent socio-technical phenomenon (Bygstad 2017): the capacity to innovate is determined by the ongoing discourse between the actors on their interpretation and use of artifacts (i.e., generative relationships).

• It is not an attribute of an object (such as technology), but rather the potential outcome of the interaction of different entities.
• The outcome is dependent on, but not reducible to the entities (e.g., people and technologies) and their characteristics (e.g., knowledge and skills, flexibility)

Generative mechanisms

Generative mechanisms according to Henfridsson and Bygstad (2013)

 

 

Figure 1: Generative mechanisms according to Henfridsson and Bygstad (2013)

The evolution of digital infrastructures can be described as the interplay between three self-reinforcing generative mechanisms (Henfridsson and Bygstad 2013):

Innovation

The creative combination of social and technical elements in order to create new services.

Adoption

The recruitment of users through easy-to-use solutions, which allows more investments.

Scaling

The expansion of the network to include more partners to provide more services.

A successful digital infrastructure is self-reinforcing, that is, it recursively feeds on itself.

Discussion

Bygstad (2017) coins the concepts heavyweight IT and lightweight IT.

What could be the difference between heavyweight IT and lightweight IT?

Two knowledge regimes

	Heavyweight IT	Lightweight IT
	A knowledge regime, driven by IT professionals, enabled by systematic specification and proven digital technology and realized through software engineering.	A knowledge regime, driven by competent users’ need for solutions, enabled by the consumerisation of digital technology and realized through innovation processes.
Profile	Back-end: Supporting documentation of work	Front-end: Supporting work processes
Owner	IT department	Users and vendors
Systems	Transaction systems	Process support, apps, BI
Technology	PCs, servers, databases, integration technology	Tablets, electronic whiteboards, mobile phones
Architecture	Fully integrated solutions, centralized or distributed	Non-invasive solutions, frequently meshworks (heterogeneous networks)
Culture	Systematics, quality, security	Innovation, experimentation
Problems	Increasing complexity, rising costs	Isolated gadgets, security
Discourse	Software engineering	Business and practice innovation

Table 1: Heavyweight and lightweight IT (Bygstad 2017, 182)

Discussion

Do you have examples for heavyweight IT and lightweight IT?

Observations

Both are generative: heavyweight IT constitutes a powerful resource for developing new services; lightweight IT allows the non-IT specialist to deploy, use and benefit from IT to support their work processes.

	Heavyweight IT	Lightweight IT
Innovation	Emerge from the interactions between different IT specialists in co-operation with business managers.	Emerge from the interactions of powerful users with IT product specialists.
Adoption	Tend to follow a waterfall model with implementation, training, and support from IT staff. Use is often mandatory.	Adoption tends to be voluntary and takes place in a more improvised process.
Scaling	May scale well or poorly, depending on its architecture and the skills of the IT staff.	Does not scale easily into other sites or domains, e.g. due to dependency on highly dedicated persons.

Table 2: Observations regarding generative mechanisms of heavyweight and lightweight IT (Bygstad 2017)

Discussion

How do heavyweight and lightweight IT relate in term of generativity?

Generative relationship

While heavyweight and lightweight IT has their internal generative capacities, the interaction between heavyweight IT and lightweight IT represents generates generative potential (Bygstad 2017).

However, the knowledge regimes tend to be more incompatible than often assumed, because of their nested structures of technology and work practices.

Thus, generativity does not mean tight integration, rather heavyweight IT and lightweight IT should be loosely coupled (i.e., technically and organizationally)

• Lightweight IT should support work processes successfully before it is integrated.
• Innovation is best served by different organisations developing heavyweight and lightweight IT.

Discussion

Why are these knowledge regimes relevant for BVC in contemporary organizations?

Conclusion

Heavyweight IT is currently overloaded in most organisations, with rising cost, long backlogs and increasing complexity.

Adding lightweight IT into this situation will hardly make things easier. Rather, there is a need for a sensible division of labour between heavyweight and lightweight IT (Bygstad 2017).

• Heavyweight IT should concentrate on the stable elements of digital infrastructures
• Lightweight IT should provide the unstable and short-lived elements of the infrastructures

For this division of labor to work, it is essential that the two knowledge regimes be loosely coupled.

Q&A

Literature

Bygstad, Bendik. 2017. “Generative Innovation: A Comparison of Lightweight and Heavyweight IT.” Journal of Information Technology 32 (2): 180–93.

Henfridsson, Ola, and Bendik Bygstad. 2013. “The Generative Mechanisms of Digital Infrastructure Evolution.” MIS Quarterly, 907–31.

Phelan, Steven E. 2001. “What Is Complexity Science, Really?” Emergence, A Journal of Complexity Issues in Organizations and Management 3 (1): 120–36.

Zittrain, JL. 2006. “The Generative Internet. Harvard Law Review.” Oxford Legal Studies Research Paper 119: 1970.

Footnotes

1. E.g., Phenomona explained by generativity are for instance biological diversity, social systems and language