EVALUATING INNOVATIVE PROTOTYPES

摘要

Innovation evaluation approaches have primarily focused on studying the adoption and use of existing technologies. However, as development timelines and product life cycles continue to shrink, it is useful to be able to evaluate emerging innovative technologies. Recognizing this, the research outlined in this paper shows how lead users (Von Hippel 1988) can be combined with adaptive structuration theory (DeSanctis & Poole 1994) and the repertory grid technique (Kelly 1955) in evaluation of innovations at the prototype stage. A context-aware application, co-developed by the researchers and industrial representatives, is presented as an illustration of such a prototype. The paper demonstrates how IT researchers can take an active stance in the evaluation of on-going technological innovation designs.