Leveraging BI Systems to Overcome Infobesity: A Comparative Analysis of Incumbent and New Entrant firms

Abstract

Infobesity is a condition whereby firms collect more information than they need or more information than they can efficiently use. As both incumbent firms and new entrant firms face different information-rich technological and economic environments, they are at a greater risk of infobesity which can compromise their innovation outcomes. In this study we leverage a research design that integrates inductive analytics and abductive discovery to uncover how incumbent and new-entrant firms leverage Business Intelligence systems and digital collaboration activities to innovate in the face of infobesity. We find that new entrant firms encounter a threshold effect governed by the use of BI systems to filter information from their customer network. On the other hand, we found that while most incumbents are able to innovate, there are uninventive incumbents that are unable to develop new products when they deploy only moderate levels of BI systems to filter their supplier data.