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ABSTRACT

Contemporary organizations often adopt innovations as their top priority to survive severe global competition and the rapidly changing business environment. Although organizational gains from using an innovation (i.e. innovation success) appear to largely depend on the correct decision to adopt an effective innovation, ultimately, innovation success cannot be obtained until individuals consistently use or implement the innovation (i.e. implementation success). Considering the importance of innovation implementation, we scrutinize the factors influencing the implementation process and outcomes for all innovation types (e.g., technological and process, service and product, and administrative innovation). Specifically, we conduct a systematic review of the existing studies on innovation implementation and categorize the factors into four groups: innovation characteristics, social factors, organizational factors, and individual factors. Drawing on the findings obtained from our investigation and our insights shaped during the systematic review process, we suggest three future research agendas: (a) consider individual factors as the primary predictors of an individual's implementation behavior toward innovation; (b) examine the possibility that innovations change during their implementation and that multiple forms of implementation outcomes can result; and (c) uncover the implementation mechanism of organizations that continuously adopt and implement innovations over a prolonged period.

ARTICLE HISTORY

Received 19 March 2016

Accepted 23 May 2017

KEYWORDS

Innovation; implementation; innovation characteristics; social factors; organizational factors; individual factors

1. Introduction

Innovation is generally defined as a new technology, service, or process that is aimed at improving individual and organizational performance (Klein, Conn, & Sorra, 2001); thus, contemporary organizations that struggle to survive in a rapidly changing business environment set innovation as their top priority. As innovation is considered idea utilization, the innovation process consists of two distinct stages: adoption, which refers to the organization's decision to use an innovation, and implementation, which refers to the employees' consistent use of the innovation after its adoption (Klein & Sorra, 1996). Although the adoption of an effective innovation - one expected to generate the desired organizational change or performance increase - is essential for innovation success, innovation success can be achieved only when the innovation is consistently used by individuals.

Despite its practical importance, the innovation literature has shed relatively less light on implementation (Choi & Chang, 2009). As evidence, the total number of academic papers published in the innovation...

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