PowerPoint Use and Misuse in Digital Innovation

European Conference on Information Systems May 28th 2015, Münster

Raffaele Ciriello Alexander Richter Gerhard Schwabe

Track 23: Openness and IT 1

PowerPoint Use and Misuse in Digital Innovation

Institut für Informatik

Tu#e, E.R., 2003. The cogni3ve style of PowerPoint. Graphics Press Cheshire, CT.

1996: NASA Space Shuttle crashes after engineers document the fatal threat in PowerPoint

2

Stark, D., Paravel, V., 2008. PowerPoint in Public Digital Technologies and the New Morphology of Demonstra3on. Theory, Culture & Society 25, 30–55.

2003: Colin Powell uses PowerPoint to motivate the invasion of IRAQ

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2011/2012 – Apple/Amazon CEOs ban PowerPoint

Isaacson, W., 2011. Steve jobs. JC LaTès. Rose, C., 2012. Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos Talks Tech: Video [WWW Document]. Bloomberg.

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2013: PowerPoint remains the main work tool in project-based organizations

Schoeneborn, D., 2013. The Pervasive Power of PowerPoint: How a Genre of Professional Communica3on Permeates Organiza3onal Communica3on. Organiza3on Studies.

5

Motivation

Large User Base (Parks 2012)

§  1 billion PowerPoint installations §  350 PowerPoint assisted

presentations each second §  500 million active users

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Surprising Phenomena

§  PowerPoint as main work product in project-based organizations (Schoeneborn 2013)

§  PowerPoint as malleable artifact that shapes ever more practices (Yates and Orlikowski 2007)

How do employees use PowerPoint in digital innovation? ? Ciriello, R., Richter, A., Schwabe, G. – Power Point Use and Misuse in Digital Innovation – ECIS 2015 – Münster 6

Research Design

Ciriello, R., Richter, A., Schwabe, G. – Power Point Use and Misuse in Digital Innovation – ECIS 2015 – Münster 7

Setting

§  European banking software provider founded in 1990s §  Rapid growth to an international marked leader §  2008’s financial crisis increased the pressure to innovate

Data Analysis and Interpretation

Qualitative data analyses over interview transcripts, collected slides and field reports §  Codebook (DeCuir-Gunby et al. 2011)

§  Genre analysis (Yates and Orlikowski, 2007)

Data Collection

Ethnographically informed field study (Robinson et al. 2007)

§  62 semi-structured interviews

§  41 collected slide decks

Idea Generation & Mobilization

Results

§  Brainstorming §  Structuration §  Freedom of Expression §  Mind Maps §  Directly Presentable


Advocating & Screening

Diffusion & Implementation

Commerciali-zation Experimentation


PowerPoint

Blinded for Confiden3ality

Advocating and Screening

Results

§  Persuading Presentations §  Creating a movement §  Spreading the Idea §  Provide appealing high level

overview






PowerPoint


Results


Experimentation

§  “Paper Point Prototyping” §  Collaboration §  Collecting Feedback §  Sharing digital documents

among project team





PowerPoint


Results Advocating & Screening




PowerPoint

Commercialization

§  Working paper §  Modelling tool



Results


Diffusion and Implementation

§  Product Presentation §  Training Documentation





PowerPoint


PowerPoint Ambivalences Allowing greater freedom of

expression Inhibiting creativity vs.

Persuasiveness of aesthetic slides

Overshadowing the idea’s actual degree of maturity

vs.

… which can display facts that do not yet exist in reality

… when presentations do not provide sufficient information on the idea’s actual state

… as a ready-to-hand tool … when using PowerPoint to brainstorm early ideas already.

Universal business language Misinterpretations vs.

… when communicating with people from different social worlds

… when PowerPoint documents serve multiple purposes (e.g. presentation AND project report)


Conclusions


§  People seem to favor general tools over specialized tools

§  Power point should be seen as important part of innovation practices

§  Digital innovation should be seen as a bundle of practices where PowerPoint mediates interaction to a large extend

Thank you – Any questions?

search.dilbert.com/comic/Powerpoint


References

DeCuir-Gunby, J.T., Marshall, P.L., McCulloch, A.W., 2011. Developing and using a codebook for the analysis of interview data: An example from a professional development research project. Field Methods 23, 136–155.

Desouza, K.C., 2011. Intrapreneurship: managing ideas within your organization. University of Toronto Press.

Parks, B., 2012. Death to PowerPoint! BusinessWeek: lifestyle. Robinson, H., Segal, J., Sharp, H., 2007. Ethnographically-informed empirical studies of

software practice. Information and Software Technology 49, 540–551. Schoeneborn, D., 2013. The Pervasive Power of PowerPoint: How a Genre of

Professional Communication Permeates Organizational Communication. Organization Studies.

Schoeneborn, D., 2013. The Pervasive Power of PowerPoint: How a Genre of Professional Communication Permeates Organizational Communication. Organization Studies.

Stark, D., Paravel, V., 2008. PowerPoint in Public Digital Technologies and the New Morphology of Demonstration. Theory, Culture & Society 25, 30–55.

Yates, J., Orlikowski, W., 2007. The PowerPoint presentation and its corollaries: how genres shape communicative action in organizations. Communicative practices in workplaces and the professions: Cultural perspectives on the regulation of discourse and organizations 67–91.

PowerPoint Use and Misuse in Digital Innovation

Science

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