Technology for a Smarter Planet: The Role of Cognitive Technologies and Open Innovation.

Abstract

Information technology is making the human race smarter by increasing its cognitive capacity through at least two drivers: Open Innovation and cognitive computing. Open innovation allows leveraging the wisdom of the crowds by bringing in more people into the fold through open innovation platforms, open source development and citizen science. In this sense, open innovation is enabling harnessing of the latent cognitive surplus of the human race. The dawn of the cognitive computing era on the other hand, is affording new uses of computers in organizational decision making. Specifically, IT is now enabling organizations to scan, interpret and learn from larger subsets of their informational environment hitherto considered inaccessible and un-interpretable by computers. As organizations and individuals gain this sixth sense of sorts, they can make better resource allocation decisions. In my dissertation, I study both these technology developments and their role in making organizations smarter and thus better generators of value. The underlying motivation is that better organizational decisions will allow better use of scarcer resources making the planet more sustainable. In chapter 2, a purposive theoretical framework for synthesizing the role of IT in organizational decision making is attempted. The proposed interpretive model of IT, also achieves a clear delineation between the programmable and cognitive computing eras. In chapter 3, the antecedents of predictive analytics usage within firms are explored through an empirical study. In chapter 4, an empirical study of the idea selection process within an open innovation funnel is undertaken to explore the question whether open innovation funnels prefer innovative ideas over conservative ideas.