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Generative innovation: a comparison of lightweight and heavyweight IT

  • Research Article
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Journal of Information Technology

Abstract

This paper proposes a simple terminology for understanding and dealing with two current phenomena; we suggest calling them heavyweight and lightweight IT. Heavyweight IT denotes the well-established knowledge regime of large systems, developing ever more sophisticated solutions through advanced integration. Lightweight IT is suggested as a term for the new knowledge regime of mobile apps, sensors and bring-your-own-device, also called consumerisation and Internet-of-Things. The key aspect of lightweight IT is not only the cheaper and more available technology compared with heavyweight IT, but the fact that its deployment is frequently done by users or vendors, bypassing the IT departments. Our theoretical lens is generativity, the idea that complex phenomena arise from interactions among basic elements. In the context of IT, generativity helps to explain the creative potential of flexible digital technology for knowledgeable professionals and users. The research questions are: how is generativity different in heavyweight and lightweight IT, and what is the generative relationship between heavyweight and lightweight IT? These questions were investigated through a study of four cases in the health sector. Our findings show that (i) generativity enfolds differently in heavyweight and lightweight IT and (ii) generativity in digital infrastructures is supported by the interaction of loosely coupled heavyweight and lightweight IT. The practical design implication is that heavyweight and lightweight IT should be only loosely integrated, both in terms of technology, standardisation and organisation.

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Notes

  1. The notions of lightness and heaviness have a long history in European philosophy and literature. In On The Heavens, Aristotle ascribed absolute weight to the earth and absolute lightness to fire, while the weight of other elements was relative. Parmenides argued that lightness was positive and to be desired, while weight was negative. In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera played with the dichotomies of lightness (momentary pleasures) and heaviness (Nietzsche’s idea of ‘eternal return’, where time is circular). In software engineering the term lightweight methods, such as XP was introduced around 2000, as a contrast to heavyweight methods, such as RUP.

  2. Infrastructure is used as a term to conceptualise interconnected system collectives. The past 20 years have witnessed research on digital infrastructures covering different settings such as health, telecom, finance, government and manufacturing. Hanseth and Lyytinen (2010) defined an information infrastructure as ‘a shared, open (and unbounded), heterogeneous and evolving socio-technical system (which we call installed base) consisting of a set of IT capabilities and their users, operations and design’ (p. 4).

  3. The security and privacy issues of lightweight IT are indeed problematic, and must be addressed, theoretically, technically and organisationally. They are however not dealt with in this paper, which focuses on the generativity aspects.

  4. Following Bhaskar ([1975] 1997), we define generative mechanisms as causal structures that generate observable events. The outcome of a mechanism is contingent, that is, it may vary depending on context.

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Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the JIT reviewers for useful feedback, and in particularly the author would also like to thank the Senior Editor for her engagement with the paper. An earlier version of this paper was published at ECIS 2015. Thanks are also due to the many informants for their time and engagement. This research was part of the FIGI project, supported financially by the Regionale Forskningsfond, Hovedstaden.

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  1. Department of Informatics, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Bendik Bygstad

  2. Norwegian School of Economics, Bergen, Norway

    Bendik Bygstad

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Correspondence to Bendik Bygstad.

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Bygstad, B. Generative innovation: a comparison of lightweight and heavyweight IT. J Inf Technol 32, 180–193 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1057/jit.2016.15

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