Feast and Famine: Resource scarcity, slack, and digital infrastructure innovation

As digital infrastructures continue to have an expanded role in contemporary society, organizations are interested in innovating the technologies and practices that comprise digital infrastructure. The level of resources available to organizations – be they scarce or slack - has been associated with other forms of innovation, and the issue of resources is particularly applicable to digital infrastructures. In this research we look to unpack the relationship between resource scarcity and slack and digital infrastructure innovation through an exploratory study of two computationally-intensive research centers. We find that digital infrastructure innovation appears to be quite different from other types of innovative activity in that exploratory behaviors directly precede resource acquisition. We conclude with a process model of digital infrastructure innovation in which conditions of both resource scarcity and resource slack interplay with exploratory and exploitative innovative behaviors.