Innovation Initiatives in Local Settings

We examine IT innovation processes and associated effects on industrial automation for a global supplier of high-technology automation equipment (ABB) and their customer (LKAB), a large mining firm. Our study highlights a change in the forms of materiality within used automation technology â a shift from controlling isolated manufacturing devices into controlling networks of âsmartâ devices connected by Internet computing. While the new networked and ubiquitous computing infrastructure holds a potential for radical service innovation, this potential has not been fulfilled. One of the factors accounting for the unexploited potential being how the global IT service innovation strategy was not well aligned to the local context and existing networks of actors. To explain this unfolding of events we coin the term âdecelerated innovationâ. Keywords