The paradoxical effects of digital artefacts on innovation practices

Abstract

Digital artefacts are increasingly used for supporting innovation practices, implying a growing need to better understand their role in different contexts. In this paper, we study how digital artefacts enable and constrain innovation practices by means of an in-depth, multi-year qualitative field study at a software firm. Analysing the usage of PowerPoint, as a dominant digital innovation artefact, we identify three paradoxes – conflicting yet interdependent tensions of digital artefacts in innovation practices: (1) Freedom and Captivity, (2) Clarity and Ambiguity, and (3) Scarcity and Abundance. Via a dialectic synthesis of the three paradoxes and an extension to modelling tools, we develop a substantive theory of the paradoxical effects of digital artefacts on innovation practices. We discuss theoretical implications for research on affordances and outline a path for research on IT paradoxes. We also offer practical implications by illustrating the paradoxical effects of using digital innovation artefacts and suggesting appropriate coping strategies.

Full text

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The Paradoxical Effects of Digital Artifacts on
Innovation Practices
This is an author copy of the article: Raffaele Fabio Ciriello, Alexander Richter & Gerhard Schwabe
(2018), The paradoxical effects of digital artefacts on innovation practices, European Journal of
Information Systems. Online at https://tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0960085X.2018.1524418
Abstract
Digital artifacts are increasingly used for supporting innovation practices,
implying a growing need to better understand their role in different contexts. In
this paper, we study how digital artifacts enable and constrain innovation
practices by means of an in-depth, multi-year qualitative field study at a
software firm. Analyzing the usage of PowerPoint, as a dominant digital
innovation artifact, we identify three paradoxes – conflicting yet interdependent
tensions of digital artifacts in innovation practices: 1) Freedom and Captivity, 2)
Clarity and Ambiguity, and 3) Scarcity and Abundance. Via a dialectic synthesis
of the three paradoxes and an extension to modeling tools, we develop a
substantive theory of the paradoxical effects of digital artifacts on innovation
practices. We discuss theoretical implications for research on affordances and
outline a path for research on IT paradoxes. We also offer practical implications
by illustrating the paradoxical effects of using digital innovation artifacts and
suggesting appropriate coping strategies.
Keywords: Paradox, Innovation practices, Digital, Artifact, Affordances,
Qualitative field study, PowerPoint, Modeling Tools
1 Introduction
Many companies rely on the creation of new digital products and services to succeed in
today’s increasingly digitized world (Fichman et al., 2014; Nambisan et al., 2017). With their
objective of supporting employees to create digital innovations, companies need to
understand the fundamental changes imposed by new kinds of information technology (IT)
and the associated changing nature of innovation (Desouza, 2011; Yoo et al., 2012, 2010). A
logical starting point for understanding these evolving digital innovation practices is to study
how innovators in organizations use digital artifacts to form, evolve, and add to a shared
innovation agenda (Ciriello et al., 2017a). As these digital artifacts allow space- and time-
independent collaboration on innovations, understanding their mediating role becomes ever
more important (Nambisan et al., 2017).
Closely related to this, scholars have argued that malleable and flexible digital artifacts
increasingly contribute to the ongoing formation and transformation of organizational
practices, with a host of far-reaching consequences that we do not yet fully understand
(Faulkner and Runde, 2013). Only when we understand the relationship between the
characteristics of a tool and the underlying usage practices, we will be able to fully
understand the positive or negative consequences of its use (Orlikowski, 2007).

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It is in line with these calls for action that we suggest studying digital innovation artifacts with
certain characteristics that seem to have ambivalent effects on innovation practices. Through
dialectic synthesis, based on related literature and a set of qualitative data collected at an
innovating software firm, we provide a rich understanding of the tension that comes into play
when using digital artifacts in innovation practices. By examining in parallel how digital
artifacts enable and constrain innovation practices, we show that their beneficial and
detrimental effects cannot be regarded separately. This is the analytical focus of this paper,
in which we raise and address the guiding research question:
RQ: How do digital artifacts enable and constrain innovation practices?
The contribution of this paper is a substantive theory of the paradoxical effects of digital
artifacts on innovation practices. Substantive theory refers to theory that is moderately
abstract, is developed based on analysis of observations for a specific area of inquiry, and is
particularly important for practice disciplines (Gregor, 2006). Our substantive theory provides
rich insight into the role of digital artifacts in innovation practices. Through dialectic
synthesis, we critically reflect on the paradoxical effects of PowerPoint - as an example for
an arguably dominant digital innovation artifact - on innovation practices. This allows us to
illustrate the contradictory ambivalences, i.e. paradoxes, that innovators experience when
using digital innovation artifacts, and to show how innovators cope with these paradoxes.
We demonstrate the transferability of our substantive theory by means of a comparative
analysis with modeling tools. From this, we hypothesize that any digital artifact with similar
affordances like PowerPoint may give rise to similar paradoxical tensions between Freedom
and Captivity, Clarity and Ambiguity, and Scarcity and Abundance. We discuss theoretical
implications for the study of digital artifacts and set the stage for further research on their
paradoxical effects. A practical contribution is that innovators and innovation managers can
use these paradoxes as a guideline to understand how using digital artifacts with similar
kinds of affordances can enable and constrain innovation practices.
In the remainder of this paper, we summarize prior work on digital artifacts and describe
PowerPoint and its affordances with regards to innovation practices in Section 2. We
introduce the paradox lens we adopt to theorize the ambivalent role of digital artifacts in
Section 3. We then give detailed insights into our research approach in Section 4, providing
context on the qualitative data set we gathered in our extensive field study, consisting of 64
interviews, 116 slide decks, and 196 days of participant observation, illustrating how its
analysis helped us to theorize paradoxes of digital innovation artifacts. Section 5 sets out our
results – three paradoxes and ways of coping with them. Section 6 contains a theoretical
integration and discussion of the implications of our study. In Section 7, we conclude by
summarizing the key takeaways and pointing to areas of future work.
2. A Paradox Perspective on Digital Artifacts
We adopt a paradox perspective to study the ambivalent effects of digital artifacts on
innovation practices. Schad et al. (2016, p. 10) define paradox as "persistent contradiction
between interdependent elements". This definition emphasizes two properties of a paradox:
1) contradiction between two underlying propositions (A and B) that seem plausible

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individually but impossible when juxtaposed, and 2) the necessity of responding with coping
strategies that embrace the tension simultaneously (Smith and Lewis, 2011).
Poole and Van de Ven (1989, p. 565) advocate four such coping strategies:
1) acceptance – keeping A and B separate and their contrasts appreciated,
2) spatial separation – situating A and B at two different levels of analysis,
3) temporal separation – switching between A and B in the same location at different points
in time,
4) synthesis – finding a new perspective that eliminates the opposition between A and B (cf.
Smith and Lewis, 2011, p. 385).
In recent years, paradoxes of our increasingly complex social world attract considerable
attention in management studies and organization studies (Smith et al., 2017). For instance,
scholars have identified paradoxical tensions in organizational processes of exploration and
exploitation (Andriopoulos and Lewis, 2009; Raisch and Zimmermann, 2017; Smith, 2014;
Tushman and O’Reilly III, 1996), in knowledge workers' conflicting demands of personal
autonomy and professional commitment (Mazmanian et al., 2013), and in contradictory
technology affordances that interact to balance, rebalance, and provide feedback in online
knowledge production (Faraj et al., 2011).
Despite this growing interest, paradoxes remain a nascent field of study, in which much work
is interpretive and exploratory (Smith et al., 2017). Unlike logical paradoxes, which have
deep historical roots in Eastern and Western philosophical traditions, socially constructed
paradoxes oppose elements that are often somewhat vague, where contradictory elements
are embedded in material artifacts, practices, and arrangements (Hargrave and Van de Ven,
2017), and tension between incompatible propositions in the social world must be
considered, rather than dealing with logical contradictions (Poole and Van de Ven, 1989).
Instead of striving for harmony and consistency, looking for theoretical tension and using it in
a creative way creates an opportunity to develop more encompassing theories that capitalize
on the duality and generative force of paradoxical tension (Eisenhardt, 2000; Hargrave and
Van de Ven, 2017; Poole and Van de Ven, 1989).
Coping with such paradoxical tensions requires people to develop special cognitive abilities,
which have been described as paradoxical cognition (Lewis, 2000), both/and thinking (Quinn
et al., 2006), and either/and thinking (Jing and Van de Ven, 2014; Li, 2012), indicating that
the paradoxes to be dealt with consist of tensions between distinct yet unified opposed
elements that people can often only cope with rather than resolve (Hargrave and Van de
Ven, 2017). Smith and Lewis (2011) describe a dynamic equilibrium model in which
managers engage in a process of synergy to purposefully iterate between contradictory
elements in order to avoid "paralyzing and often vicious cycles" and instead initiate "virtuous
cycles" (p. 761).
In information systems (IS) research, paradoxes have been used as rhetorical devices to
create appealing tension that exposes novel insights of the irony and dilemma that digital
artifacts embody. For instance, IS scholars have identified paradoxical tensions in the
growing and stagnating productivity of IT (Brynjolfsson, 1993), in the promoting and
impeding role of IT in organizational change (Robey and Boudreau, 1999), in the strategic
value and low status of IT management (Avison et al., 1999), in the intended and unintended

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consequences of mobile technology usage (Jarvenpaa and Lang, 2005), in the conflicting
demands of personalization and privacy in online consumer profiling (Awad and Krishnan,
2006), in the physical organization of virtual team work (Dubé and Robey, 2009), and in the
ambidextrous management of IT transformation programs (Gregory et al., 2015).
For the context of digital infrastructure, Tilson et al. (2010) discuss the paradoxical nature of
change and control. Referring to Ford and Backoff (1988), who argue that digital
infrastructure appears stable only when opposite tendencies are brought into recognizable
proximity through reflection or interaction, Tilson et al. (2010) advocate a duality view on
paradoxes. This implies a need for both stability and flexibility, alongside control and
autonomy. We therefore suggest adopting a paradox perspective to illustrate and make
sense of the ambivalent practices enabled by digital artifacts. Our dialectic examination of
three paradoxes, which ends in a synthesis, can be seen as such a duality view, as it later
“enables us to dissolve and transcend” the paradoxical effects of digital artifact usage
(Farjoun, 2010, p. 202).
3 Literature Background
We start this section by introducing our research domain – innovation practices – and
discussing the important role of digital artifacts in such practices. Next, we focus on
PowerPoint as a dominant digital innovation artifact, and especially its affordances in the
context of innovation practices.
3.1 Digital Innovation Artifacts
The development of new products and services, enabled by software or resulting in new
software, has become essential for companies to compete and lead in today's digitized world
(Fichman et al., 2014; Nambisan et al., 2017; Yoo et al., 2012). This leads to a growing
interest in understanding innovation practices in the software industry. In software firms,
innovation is an iterative, interactive, and feedback-intensive process that requires
exchanging ideas between different kinds of stakeholders who engage in challenging
innovation practices that require creativity (Neyer et al., 2009).
Many of these innovation practices, such as ideating, sketching, modeling, or prototyping
software systems to collaborate and persuade decision-makers, build strongly on using
digital artifacts. Such usage is widely considered to be a fundamental aspect of any practice
(Carlile et al., 2013). When defining practices as “embodied, materially mediated arrays of
human activity centrally organized around shared practical understandings,” Schatzki (2001,
p. 2) directs special attention to the mediating ‘material,’ referring to the role of artifacts in
practice. In line with this view, practice-based studies in the information systems discipline
have gone hand in hand with a parallel emphasis on the social and material nature of
practices, where the relationship between human activity and technology is one of mutual
mediation (Leonardi, 2011; Orlikowski and Barley, 2001). As Orlikowski (2007) states, a
practice perspective unveils that “materiality is integral to organizing, positing that the social
and the material are constitutively entangled in everyday life” (p. 1437, italics in original).

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In this paper, the term digital innovation artifact refers to any underspecified representation
of an envisaged new software product (Ciriello et al., 2017a). A fundamental characteristic of
any digital innovation artifact (going forward just artifact) is that it is always practice-oriented.
The artifact can be the means and/or the end of a practice, but the underlying practice
determines its role (Kaptelinin and Nardi, 2009). Analyzing artifact usage yields an
opportunity to better understand the underlying practices (Riemer and Johnston, 2014). In
innovation practices, artifacts can manifest as abstract ideas or concepts and are therefore
often emergent, unfinished, and partial (Ciriello et al., 2014). They may represent an
envisaged solution, embody multiple viewpoints, and enable a shared understanding (Star
and Griesemer, 1989). An artifact can mediate both individual work and collaboration
(Nicolini et al., 2012). It can be used in a private space, confronting the innovator with a first
prospect of a new idea, advancing thinking and inspiring further development (Rheinberger,
1997). An artifact can also be used to collect feedback and build a social coalition for further
developing the innovation. As such, the artifact can be an important tool to facilitate
communication and decision-making (Ciriello et al., 2017b).
3.2 PowerPoint: A Dominant Digital Innovation Artifact
In the class of the abovementioned digital innovation artifacts, PowerPoint has played a
dominant role in many companies over the last decades. With more than one billion
installations, millions of slides produced every day, and several hundred presentations every
second, PowerPoint has become an indispensable tool for knowledge workers around the
globe (Parks, 2012). Over the last decades, PowerPoint usage has continuously expanded
to settings that stretch far from its originally intended purpose, and scholars argue that this
expansion will continue in the future (Kernbach et al., 2015; Schoeneborn, 2013).
Studies have shown that people often use PowerPoint not only for the original purpose of
facilitating presentations, but also for other purposes, such as brainstorming, documentation,
modeling, or even prototyping (Schoeneborn, 2013; Yates and Orlikowski, 2007). When
using PowerPoint in settings beyond the classic presentation, users experience a variety of
intended and unintended consequences that are not yet well-understood. For instance,
scholars have argued that the enforced bullet point logic suggests inaccurate levels of
simplicity and prevents critical thinking (Gabriel, 2008; Tufte, 2003); that PowerPoint slides,
which often serve the dual purpose of documentation and presentation, fail to satisfy the
information requirements of either (Schoeneborn, 2013; Yates and Orlikowski, 2007); and
that the frontal presentation style reduces active discussion in favor of passive consumption
(Kernbach et al., 2015).
In many of the abovementioned innovation practices, such as ideating, sketching, modeling,
or prototyping, IT professionals tend to prefer using general-purpose tools, which provide
them with greater freedom of expression, over single-purpose tools that enforce uniformity
(Cherubini et al., 2007). PowerPoint is therefore often used for software modeling, even in
technical domains, as it supports unconstrained sketching and does not enforce any
predefined modeling notation except for the available basic shapes, such as boxes and
arrows (Ossher et al., 2010). Especially in the creative process of generating, developing
and communicating ideas through sketches, which is essential throughout software design,
modeling tools are only effective if they do not distract from the core sketching experience
and let users stay in their natural creative flow, rather than interrupting it (Bellamy et al.,

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2011). Dedicated modeling tools usually require much effort to learn the notation and cause
premature commitment by imposing inappropriate levels of detail and order. In turn,
PowerPoint is free of constraints imposed by metamodels, has broader applicability, is
easier to learn, and allows the user to choose the order of development, enabling meaning
to evolve as content is created (Ossher et al., 2010).
The downside of software modeling with applications like PowerPoint is that the lack of
semantic representability also implies lack of semantic support. For instance, boxes and
arrows have no semantic representation as entity relationships, but only as graphic objects
(Ossher et al., 2010). As a result, there is no easy way to update the presentations and
diagrams (Ossher et al., 2010), with the result that sketches are disconnected artifacts that
cannot be stored, shared, or versioned easily, nor can they be linked to other artifacts
conveniently (Bellamy et al., 2011). In applications like PowerPoint, consistency
management is a manual and cumbersome task, as a single consistent change in style or
terminology of an element may require many actions throughout many documents (Ossher
et al., 2010).
Nevertheless, the usage of PowerPoint and similar digital innovation artifacts still increases,
as they can be very persuasive. The aesthetics of an illustrative slide play a crucial role in
persuading relevant stakeholders with different roles and educational backgrounds,
especially if the creator manages to illustrate a clear benefit in a feasible way (Carlile, 2002).
For instance, studies have shown that PowerPoint can persuasively display things that do
not yet exist in reality (Kaplan, 2011; Stark and Paravel, 2008). While this may be useful for
communicating envisaged solutions, PowerPoint presentations also tend to signal a
preparedness that overshadows the content's degree of maturity (Tufte, 2003). Problems
may arise when PowerPoint presentations do not provide sufficient information on the idea’s
actual state per se, especially when the author is not present. Misinterpretations may also
result from dissonant genre expectations (Yates and Orlikowski, 2007). For instance,
PowerPoint documents that are used for the dual purpose of presentations and project
reports tend to leave the information requirements of both purposes unsatisfied
(Schoeneborn, 2013).
Scholars have argued that PowerPoint contributes to the ongoing democratization of
innovation by giving people at all hierarchy levels a voice through their creation and
dissemination of PowerPoint slides (Kaplan, 2011). As PowerPoint approaches the status of
a universal business language (Gabriel, 2008; Schoeneborn, 2013), the widespread use of
PowerPoint allows innovators to start presenting or discussing their ideas without the
necessity to establish a common understanding of the discussion format. PowerPoint is pre-
installed on most office computers, implying that everyone can easily access and use it. The
digital presentations can also be shared with others without many intermediate steps, and
through a variety of online channels, such as chat, email, or wiki.
Others have argued that the routinized use of PowerPoint may constrain creative practices
such as freehand drawing or simply talking to each other (Gabriel, 2008). This can be
particularly detrimental when using PowerPoint in early innovation phases. Studies have
shown that the forced linearity of a PowerPoint presentation leads to a tendency to defer
questions to the end, thereby reducing the speaker’s responsiveness to the audience (Yates

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and Orlikowski, 2007), and constraining fruitful discussions, improvisations, and
inventiveness (Gabriel, 2008).
In a nutshell, the phenomenon of PowerPoint usage is widespread in many organizations,
has persisted for decades, and will likely expand in the future (Schoeneborn, 2013) despite
the negative consequences that are well-documented in the abovementioned literature.
Scholars have argued that PowerPoint’s beneficial and detrimental effects need to be
studied in parallel to provide an accurate appraisal (Kaplan, 2011). Studying PowerPoint
usage can yield a rich understanding of the underlying practice in which it is used (Fichman
et al., 2014; Leonardi, 2011; Orlikowski, 2007; Riemer and Johnston, 2014). It is in line with
these calls for action that we dialectically examine PowerPoint usage in innovation practices,
as we can expect such a study to yield insights about the general nature of digital innovation
artifacts.
3.3 Affordances of PowerPoint
If we want to clarify the role of digital artifacts in innovation practices, it is first necessary to
identify their characteristics in this context. An affordance perspective is appropriate for this
purpose, as it allows examining the characteristics of a technological tool in relation to a
specific practice. Gibson (1977) introduced the notion of affordances to study action
possibilities for animals (including humans) in relation to the properties of a given
environment. In information systems (IS) research, the affordance perspective has been
used to study the effects of digital artifacts in the context of practices. Markus and Silver
(2008) define functional affordances as "possibilities for goal-oriented action afforded to
specified user groups by technical objects" (p. 622).
One insight offered by the affordance perspective is that material properties that exist in
technical objects are contingent on, but not constitutive of, users' perception, interpretation,
and appropriation in a specific practice (Orlikowski, 2007; Orlikowski and Scott, 2008; Zheng
and Yu, 2014). While technical objects exist independently of users' perceptions, their
affordances are “not reducible to their material constitution but are inextricably bound up with
specific, historically situated modes of engagement and ways of life" (Bloomfield et al., 2010,
p. 415). This implies that affordances arise from "actions in the world" in which they are
enacted, requiring us to understand "how the specific action unfolds in that unique moment
and situation, whom and what it enrolls, and how it affects the world" (Faraj and Azad, 2012,
p. 255). It has further been argued that the enabling and constraining effects of digital
artifacts cannot be considered as alternatives (a dualism), but rather as two sides of the
same coin (a duality) (Yates and Orlikowski, 2007). As people pursue their goals with the
digital artifacts they use to perform a task, they actively construct perceptual affordances
with enabling and constraining effects (Leonardi, 2011). To make sense of a digital
innovation artifact, it is necessary to dialectically examine in parallel its enabling and
constraining effects in relation to a specific practice. We therefore focus our analysis of on
the duality of PowerPoint’s enabling and constraining effects on innovation practices.
From reviewing prior empirical studies and literature reviews, we identified the following
PowerPoint affordances that can help us to better understand its role in an innovation
context: 1) presentability, 2) animatability, 3) sequentiality, 4) modularity, 5) malleability, 6)
digitality, and 7) integrability.

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Presentability: PowerPoint slides can be projected onto a wall. Many modern meeting rooms
or lecture halls are equipped with a projector specifically for this purpose. A (semi-)dark
environment is usually necessary to visibly display the slides (Kernbach et al., 2015). Only
the presenter can control the slideshow, by using a keyboard or a remote control. The slides
cannot be edited in presentation mode, although PowerPoint allows a presenter view that
displays editable presentation notes on a screen separate from the presenting computer.
Animatability: Various animation effects can augment transitions in the slideshow in
presentation mode. These include slide transition effects, such as sliding or fading slides in
and out, as well as object animation, such as flying objects in and out, rotating objects, and
path animation of objects (Kernbach et al., 2015).
Sequentiality: The PowerPoint slide deck is an ordered, potentially unlimited, serial
sequence of slides. In standard editing mode, the miniature sidebar may allow jumping to the
n-th slide with relative ease. But in presentation mode, people usually only move back or
forward one slide after another (Tufte, 2003), as jumping to the n-th slide would require
memorizing the respective slide number and type it in, followed by enter – a feature that
many PowerPoint users are not aware of.
Modularity: As a digital artifact, PowerPoint allows the combination and recombination of
loosely coupled components (Yoo et al., 2012) in a slide deck. Objects in PowerPoint, as
well as slides containing them, can be transferred easily to another PowerPoint slide deck, to
another place in the same slide set, or to a variety of other Microsoft Office platforms (e.g.
Word, Excel, or OneNote). This requires a simple copy-paste operation, as long as the
supported software is used.
Malleability: Although originally intended broadly as a software program for editing and
presenting slides, PowerPoint does not prescribe narrowly defined use practices and can
therefore be characterized as malleable end-user software (Richter and Riemer, 2013). The
standard editing mode is generally flexible, and a PowerPoint slide may contain a variety of
objects, including free text, lists, comments, presentation notes, formulas, links, graphics,
images, shapes, tables, diagrams, audio, and video. The user is only constrained by the
available space per slide and the limited set of predefined shapes to choose from.
Digitality: While a PowerPoint slide deck relies on a certain physical infrastructure for its
execution (such as keyboard, mouse, computer, screen, projector, wall, or remote control),
PowerPoint itself is a purely digital artifact with some of the distinctive characteristics of
digital artifacts. For instance, one may produce an unlimited number of perfect copies of
PowerPoint slide decks and slides; easily share them via digital media channels, such as
email, file systems, web applications, or social media, and store them for an unlimited period
of time without expiration (Yoo, 2010; Yoo et al., 2010). In addition, search algorithms can
index and find the content of PowerPoint files, enabling storage and retrieval of embedded
information.
Integrability: PowerPoint is highly embedded in the digital infrastructure of modern everyday
work practices (Schoeneborn, 2013). The software is integrated in the widespread Microsoft
Office suite; it runs on multiple operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows and Mac

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OSX; and a variety of third party tools are able to open and edit PowerPoint files, such as
Apple Keynote, LibreOffice, or Google Docs. In addition, various web applications can
display PowerPoint slide decks, such as Slideshare.net, Atlassian Confluence, or Microsoft
SharePoint.
4 Research Method
As we expected to gain novel insights from analyzing the use of digital artifacts in innovation
practices, we conducted an exploratory field study at a European software firm to obtain a
rich understanding of the phenomenon from a participant’s perspective. We took an iterative
approach to data collection and analysis until a coherent picture emerged, moving back and
forth between theories and the different interpretations of the field study material we
obtained from social constructions, such as language, shared meaning, documents, tools,
and other artifacts (Klein and Myers, 1999). Following principles of interpretive field research
(Walsham, 2006, 1995), we iteratively refined emerging concepts through systematic data
generation and conceptualization. This paper‘s specific research question emerged
according to our deepening understanding and data conceptualization.
4.1 Relationship with the Research Site
We were initially concerned with understanding and improving employee-driven innovation in
the software industry. We therefore studied innovation practices at a large European banking
software provider and entered the research site with only a preliminary understanding of
digital artifacts in innovation practices. Because the firm wishes to remain anonymous, we‘ll
call it Banking and IT Solutions (BITS). For more than two decades, its business model has
been the development, distribution, and operation of its proprietary core banking system.
After the executive board became increasingly concerned that the life cycle of this product
might peak at some point, BITS took steps to develop various new products and services in
the areas of mobile banking, outsourcing, financial services, and consulting. We found work
to be largely structured around generating novel solutions to novel problems. Software is at
the heart of the products as well as the product development processes of BITS, which
qualifies the firm as an appropriate subject for our study.
Our style of involvement with BITS was that of a closely involved researcher having in-depth
access to data, issues, and people, who viewed the researcher as one of them, trying to
make a valid contribution to the field site (Walsham, 2006). Through this close relationship
we had the unique opportunity to study innovation practices closely.
4.2 Data Collection
In collecting our data, we iteratively selected, collected, and analyzed data slices according
to what was necessary to construct the emerging theory (Walsham, 2006, 1995). This
included obtaining access to different views from selected participants through interviews,
collecting and analyzing PowerPoint slide decks, as well as participant observations. The
first author of this paper was responsible for collecting all data from BITS to ensure

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consistency in the data collection process. Table 1 contains an overview of our applied data
collection and analysis techniques, and the following sections provide further explanations.
Table 1 – Overview of data collection and data analysis
Data
collection
technique
Appreciative
interviewing
Artifact analysis
Participant
observation
Total
collected
data
64 interviews, out of
which 62 were
transcribed and
coded
Length
• total
= 3,700 minutes
• average
= 57.81 minutes
• minimum
= 19 minutes
• maximum
= 100 minutes
418 digital
innovation
artifacts, out of
which 116 were
PowerPoint slide
decks
196 days
= 1,666 hours
• Passive:
workplace
observations,
meeting
attendance,
informal contacts
• Active: talks,
workshops,
steering meetings,
collaborations
Data
analysis
technique
Data-driven and
theory-driven coding
(DeCuir-Gunby et al.,
2011)
Genre analysis
(Yates and
Orlikowski, 2007)
Focus groups
(Weber, 1990)
We conducted 64 appreciative interviews, ranging from 19 to 100 minutes, with experts
involved in innovation projects at BITS. In appreciative interviewing, questions are framed to
evoke reflections on personal experiences, setting the stage for imagining pathways to
desirable futures (Schultze and Avital, 2011). The sessions started with a retrospective
discovery of the participant’s past experiences with using digital innovation artifacts. The
interview gradually developed into a prospective discussion of how the use of digital
innovation artifacts could be improved to better support innovation practices. By interviewing
a wide range of participants with different roles and from different units, we could seek out
and document multiple interpretations of the actions under study (Klein and Myers, 1999).
We used a semi-structured interview guide to ensure topical focus and consistency, while
allowing respondents to freely express their own views (Walsham, 2006). We recorded and
transcribed all but two interviews to capture a full description of what was said and facilitate
later in-depth analysis, which allowed us to step back and assess the interpretations of the
fellow participants in more detail (Walsham, 1995). We wrote detailed interview notes within
a day.
Following the idea of triangulation (Silverman, 2006, p. 291), we relied on multiple sources of
evidence to integrate multiple interpretations, obtained from interviews, observations, field
notes, and documentary material, into a coherent picture (Klein and Myers, 1999). For
instance, we collected and analyzed 418 digital innovation artifacts, out of which 116 were
PowerPoint slide decks. In addition, we conducted a series of participant observations at
formal and informal gatherings, such as meetings, workshops, presentations, fairs, lunches,

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and spontaneous meetings, in the context of the innovation projects, spending 196 full days
at the research site between 2013 and 2015. Where possible, photographs and field reports
complemented the observations.
4.3 Data Analysis and Interpretation
We analyzed the collected data via qualitative data analysis techniques (DeCuir-Gunby et
al., 2011; Yates and Orlikowski, 2007). Following the principles of induction, interaction, and
multiple iterations, we generated shared meaning through multiple interactions between the
authors, and multiple interactions between the authors and the informants from practice
(Walsham, 1995). For instance, the authors met weekly in focus groups to analyze data
collected by participant observation, moving back and forth between data and theories,
interrogating field material to check whether the data supported emerging claims and,
conversely, whether theories helped us to make sense of the empirical data (Walsham,
2006). Thereby, we could maintain a critical distance between being involved researchers
and the views of people on the research site.
We transcribed the interviews by following a denaturalized approach, focusing on meaning
rather than interviewees‘ accents (Weston et al., 2001). We cross-checked the transcriptions
among the research team and imported them into the qualitative data analysis software
MAXQDA to initiate an iterative and intertwined process of data-driven coding and theory-
driven coding (DeCuir-Gunby et al., 2011). Our data-driven coding process started with
generating more than 200 tentative data-driven codes which we grouped into more
aggregated themes, such as classes of digital innovation artifacts, technical characteristics
of digital innovation artifacts, human practices, and innovation process stages. This was
done via a genre analysis (Yates and Orlikowski, 2007) in which we classified the collected
PowerPoint slide decks with respect to their purpose (why?), content (what?), participants
(who/m?), form (how?), time (when?), and space (where?).
In the next phase, we moved back and forth between data-driven and theory-driven coding
by making connections between the emerging themes and related literature to construct a
more comprehensive scheme (DeCuir-Gunby et al., 2011). We focused the subsequent
analysis on reviewing and revising codes in the context of data and theory (ibid). This led us
to relate the theory-driven and data-driven codes to one another, through which we identified
the paradoxical effects of PowerPoint as the core of our substantive theory. We then
integrated the codes into a codebook shown in Table 2.
We gave BITS employees continuous feedback and opportunities to reflect on their own
practice (Walsham, 2006). Having key informants from the company review interim study
reports enabled them to reflect on our findings and report any discrepancies with their
interpretations (ibid). This involved discussing the emerging findings of the study in
workshops and presenting them at internal company talks to help practitioners reflect on and
improve their own practices. In writing this paper, we oriented ourselves toward the criteria
for writing convincing ethnographic texts advocated by Golden-Biddle and Locke (1993) –
authenticity, plausibility, and criticality.

12
Table 2 – Final version of the codebook
Code
category
PowerPoint
Affordances
(Theory-driven
codes)
PowerPoint usage
practices
(Data-driven codes)
Paradoxical Effects
of PowerPoint
(Core category)
Code
attributes
• Malleability
• Sequentiality
• Modularity
• Presentability
• Animatability
• Digitality
• Integrability
Personal practice
o Simplification
o Overloading
o Freely expressing
oneself
Interpersonal practice
o Embracing flexible
interpretations
o Bargaining
o Distancing
• Freedom and
Captivity
• Clarity and
Ambiguity
• Scarcity and
Abundance
Sources
Related literature
(cf. Section 2.3)
Collected empirical data
(cf. Table 1)
Previous codes
5 Results: How PowerPoint Enables and
Constrains Innovation Practices
We have argued from previous literature that PowerPoint is a digital innovation artifact with
distinct characteristics that are worth examining in an innovation context. We introduced our
in-depth field study of PowerPoint usage in innovation practices at BITS. In this section, we
develop three paradoxes from the insights obtained in our field study: 1) Freedom and
Captivity, 2) Clarity and Ambiguity, and 3) Scarcity and Abundance. We frame each paradox
with a short summary before we dialectically examine it, supporting both its thesis and
antithesis with empirically observed practices at BITS. We then synthesize the three
paradoxes in the discussion (Section 6).
5.1 Paradox P1 – Freedom and Captivity
From studying innovation practices at BITS, we learned that PowerPoint provides Freedom
and Captivity. In this context, freedom is understood as letting people develop and freely
express original ideas, while captivity is understood as holding people captive and
constraining creative interaction. As a malleable, ready-to-hand, easy-to-use slide editing
software program with low entry barriers, innovators use PowerPoint flexibly to adapt to
various weakly structured innovation practices, which can enable creative cognition. As a
widespread, proprietary, and inhibiting slide presentation software program with high exit

13
barriers, PowerPoint is deeply entangled in organizational infrastructures, practices, and
expectations, which can constrain creative interaction.
Thesis T1 (Freedom): PowerPoint’s malleability enables developing and
expressing creative ideas freely
PowerPoint’s malleability lets people develop visual representations of creative ideas freely
without having to conform to narrowly defined visual semantics. Editing slides can be done
quickly and easily, and without much prior knowledge of PowerPoint. Through their digitality,
PowerPoint slides allow unifying, combining, and merging various kinds of content in one
document. Our data shows that this malleability and the possibility of blending different types
of content allow a degree of free creative expression that other digital innovation artifacts do
not permit. Its widespread use and readiness-to-hand lead people to use PowerPoint in a
large variety of innovation practices.
For instance, we observed that innovators freely express themselves using PowerPoint for
brainstorming and idea generation. From the beginning of an innovation process, where a
creative spark springs to mind, PowerPoint accompanies people in freely expressing ideas:
“Every now and then, I open PowerPoint and simply draw. I illustrate my creative process,
and when I get the impression that something interesting comes out, I present it and
discuss it further. That can for example be an architectural model or a process model
when I want to improve a process; it can also be a mockup when it’s about usability.”
[Quote from interview participant 16, further i16, product manager, BITS]
Although PowerPoint is not the only brainstorming tool used at BITS, we could not find a
single innovation project of which PowerPoint was not part from an early phase. Even when
the first ideas had been generated outside of PowerPoint, there was at least one
intermediate step at some point in which PowerPoint was involved to encapsulate the
innovative vision:
"I often work with mind maps, or in workshops with lists on whiteboards, to brainstorm. I
then try to capture the ideas in PowerPoint."
[i7, software architect, BITS]
Such observations were consistent throughout all organizational roles, teams, departments,
and projects. The phenomenon of PowerPoint usage in innovation practices was so striking
that we felt compelled to better understand and explain why and how all kinds of innovators
would use PowerPoint so extensively in such different contexts, although we assumed that
there are also other, more sophisticated tools.
Many participants describe PowerPoint as a digital white canvas where they feel relatively
unrestricted regarding the type of content they create and how to create it, because it allows
content to be created relatively easily. As opposed to purpose-specific tools, which often
prescribe more narrow semantics, PowerPoint allows ideas to be expressed more freely,
which seems to better fit the vague character of innovation practices. For many participants,
PowerPoint is indispensable in practices such as conceptualizing, bargaining, and
exchanging ideas:
"PowerPoint is the main medium for various artifacts (...). In my role, I need to interact
extensively, and PowerPoint is simply good for interaction."

14
[i33, program manager, BITS].
This malleability is not confined to using PowerPoint as only a presentation tool. To our
surprise, innovators at BITS use PowerPoint in ways that go far beyond its originally
intended purpose of editing and presenting slides, such as software modeling and
prototyping. Given that we and colleagues at our university institution put considerable effort
into teaching our computer science students the goals and benefits of creating semantically
clear software diagrams and prototypes with adequate tools, we were eager to find out why
many of our graduates seemingly refuse to apply that knowledge in practice.
One participant explains the advantages of modeling in PowerPoint, as opposed to using
UML-based tools such as Agilian by Visual Paradigm and Visio by Microsoft:
"It is the learning curve of using it. In PowerPoint, you just draw your shapes. That is fine
and you move on, (...) whereas in Agilian, you have UML. That is one example you have
to learn. It is the time you need to invest to do a use case diagram properly. (...) That is
why we do not use Agilian. (...) I know Visio is used by other people; not everyone has
that. I do not have it. Again, this is used for drawing diagrams that you could probably do
(in) PowerPoint."
[i50, middle manager, BITS].
This use of PowerPoint is not limited to less experienced practitioners who did not learn how
to do architectural software diagrams "properly." Modeling in PowerPoint seems
institutionally anchored for the following rationale: If it is easier for a larger number of people
to model in PowerPoint, and the produced diagrams serve their intended purpose, why
bother putting in additional effort (and spending more money) on creating more precise
diagrams with specialized, costly, and cumbersome tools? The commercial software
products of BITS, for instance, are often documented in numerous PowerPoint slides
comprising software diagrams (e.g. use case, activity, sequence, and entity-relationship
diagrams) that are essentially all done in PowerPoint. There is even an official internal
PowerPoint template that contains more than a hundred predefined shapes for putting
together software diagrams (e.g. objects, relations, processes, tables, or messages).
This happens even though BITS selectively recruits university graduates with a strong IT
background. Its business model requires BITS to design its software in close collaboration
with less technical organizations, such as banks, where formal modeling languages like UML
would be of little value, as two senior software architects explain:
"The UML standard is not adhered to at all, because nobody appreciates it. (Our
drawings) are simply boxes and arrows, and the discussion around them is important.
The drawing is just a reminder of how it was envisaged.”
[i14, technical lead].
"At the end of the day, it does not matter whether you model with UML or PowerPoint.”
[i12, technical lead].
In an innovation context, where the outcome is not yet clearly defined, many participants find
it easier and faster to create a rough high-level design in PowerPoint, rather than having a
complete design in mind and formally specifying it in UML.

15
In a nutshell, PowerPoint flexibly adapts to many weakly structured innovation practices,
giving innovators freedom of creative expression.
Antithesis AT1 (Captivity): The PowerPoint template, its lack of semantic
representability, and social pressure around PowerPoint usage
constrain creative interaction
Whereas some participants appreciate that the standard PowerPoint templates allow the
quick generation of a relatively professional-looking slideshow, others feel that these
templates limit the possibility of designing more creative content according to individual
tastes. Innovators in our cases feel constrained by the available space per slide and the
limited set of shapes to choose from. PowerPoint also permits abbreviating sentences in a
bullet list style:
"We had a set of PowerPoint templates that we had to use. But being the slightly
rebellious technical writer, (...) I wanted to present something in a certain way, and I was
restricted because I had to conform to the template."
[i46, technical writer, BITS].
PowerPoint's malleability comes at the cost of limited semantic representability, which limits
the possibility of a structured import or export of content. For instance, the innovators in our
field study use PowerPoint to mock software diagrams or prototypes, but not to export these
objects in such a way that they could continue working on them in a dedicated software
program, since it is not possible to import such data from other tools without losing all
semantics. PowerPoint’s flexibility backfires when people want to further collaborate:
"Just try once to draw a sequence diagram in PowerPoint and you give up. At best, you
will get an image (...), but one cannot continue working on it."
[i30, software engineer, BITS].
Without the possibility for further computer-aided development on the objects created in
PowerPoint, it is impossible to perform important software engineering tasks such as code
generation, linking objects semantically across tools or even within the same tool. The
seemingly easily created PowerPoint objects become throwaway artifacts with limited
reusability:
"We always have to start from square one again and create the slides anew. (...) We
actually should agree on a tool that everybody uses. (...) One guy prefers Visio, the other
prefers Agilian, and what not. If we could only prescribe which tool to use in this company,
that would already create value. But everybody has a different opinion about that and if
you introduced something, that would already be a change project."
[i7, software architect, BITS].
Social pressure around PowerPoint further constrains creativity. After many years of deep
anchorage in organizational communication, PowerPoint is so deeply entangled in today's
everyday office work practices and people's consciousness at BITS that a PowerPoint
presentation is the expected format in many situations:
"We are so used to having a title and then five bullet points. (...) There is an accepted
slide format that is always expected, and if anything is different from that it is almost as if
people think, 'Oh, that is not right. What is this?'"

16
[i46, technical writer, BITS].
Social pressure at BITS is not only confined to the expectation that PowerPoint should be
used in many settings but includes expectations about how PowerPoint should be used. In
an innovation process, it is often necessary to persuade different audiences of one's
intended goals in order to pass through various quality gates. Here, PowerPoint remains a
preferred choice to visualize the essence of an idea. Given that innovation practices at BITS
require the persuasion of a paying customer or other internal or external idea sponsors at
some point, a commonly expected setting for a PowerPoint presentation is the sales pitch.
We observed that presenters of PowerPoint slides often develop a selling attitude coupled
with a tendency to commercialize and exaggerate. For instance, the BITS management
organizes recurring events where employees can give an elevator pitch of their idea in a
couple of minutes to acquire funding or other support. The main medium of these sales
pitches is, of course, a PowerPoint presentation:
“PowerPoint works well if you need money. Then you need condensed slides. I recently
learned that you already have to illustrate everything in an abstract on the first slide. Even
in PowerPoint you need a management summary, because you often don’t even pass the
first slide.
[i6, technical lead, BITS]
At times, this strong expectation to use PowerPoint in a certain way resembles social
coercion. Although many innovators at BITS dislike PowerPoint's afforded captivity, most of
them would still not dare to enter an important meeting without having prepared a
PowerPoint presentation with the utmost care if they expect a certain outcome:
“I have learned that I am only successful when I adequately illustrate what I want to
achieve. [...] So when I need a decision, I create a PowerPoint presentation, because that
is just how it is done here.”
[i8, middle manager, BITS]
Many participants would like to see more willingness to informally discuss unfinished ideas
among their colleagues, but PowerPoint creates barriers:
“The hurdle to present something is very high here, because everyone always expects
high-class presentations. It rarely happens that somebody says, ‘come and tell me what
you think in a 15-minute coffee break’”.
[i6, technical lead, BITS]
Only a few participants stated that they outright reject using PowerPoint to discuss ideas.
For instance, because of the distance it develops between creator and content, using
PowerPoint can lead to less emotional engagement than drawing with a pencil. While
whiteboard, paper, and pencil allow free-form creative sketching and simultaneous drawing
and discussing among several people, PowerPoint puts the presenter in a dominating
position over the audience, because only one person can control the presentation and edit
the document at any given moment. Presenters are tempted to develop overly fixed, closed,
and previously defined opinions, because the presentation cannot easily be altered in
response to the dynamics of the discussion.

17
“The PowerPoint, though, that's (…) just the obvious thing in which to show a digest or
the bullet point items of an idea. It's more of a one-way mechanism, though, there's no
real collaborative element.”
[i46, technical writer, BITS]
In addition, the presenter usually stands close to the projected slides, and at moderate
distance from the audience that sits in the necessarily darkened room. This creates a
narcotic, distanced atmosphere that can hinder creative interaction and discussion.
5.2 Paradox P2 – Clarity and Ambiguity
It became evident in our field study that PowerPoint plays a paradoxical role in people's
decision-making practices at BITS. In some instances, we observed that PowerPoint helps
people to clarify ideas when they are required to make a decision on how to proceed. For
instance, given the limited space per slide and the strong tendency to abbreviate, people use
PowerPoint extensively to structure and simplify ideas, which may lead to well-informed
innovation decisions. In other cases, we found that people dilute content when they use
PowerPoint, leading to ambiguities that may lead to poor innovation decisions. For instance,
given the interpretively flexible nature of semantically ambiguous PowerPoint slides, people
were often confronted with misinterpretations. In some instances, people embraced these
ambiguities purposefully to stimulate discussion, but often without the desired outcome. We
call this the Clarity and Ambiguity Paradox and examine it in the following sections.
Thesis T2 (Clarity): PowerPoint's modularity and sequentiality enable
users to structure thoughts, simplify complex issues, and break down
large topic blocks into smaller ones, thereby allowing for a clarification
of ideas.
In the section on the Freedom and Captivity Paradox, we touched upon the finding that
innovation practices at BITS usually involve alternating sequences of individual and
interpersonal practices. Recalling this aspect is a starting point to conceptualizing the Clarity
and Ambiguity Paradox.
From studying BITS, we learned that two conditions are essential to facilitate innovation.
First, the driving force behind any innovation project is usually an ingenious individual, or a
small group of ingenious individuals. These individuals need facilitating conditions to
continuously elaborate the idea, make sense of it, and draw out its essential core. Second,
coalition building is an integral part of the innovation process, requiring continuous
persuasion, collaboration, and alignment with relevant stakeholders.
We observed that people use PowerPoint as a guide to simplify complex content, structure
thoughts, and break down large topic blocks. These clarifying qualities of PowerPoint are
partly supported by its captivating qualities (cf. AT1). For instance, recall that many
participants described how PowerPoint's limited template urges them to abbreviate
sentences and create high-level visual illustrations that fit on the available space of the
sequential slides. While this constrains some innovators at BITS, others exploit these
characteristics as an aid to focus on the essential aspects of an idea:

18
"I typically begin with mind maps. In general, you start from a problem, and there it
begins: How do I formulate what I actually mean? (...) Here, mind maps are quite good to
structure the thoughts. (...) In the next step, I often work with charts or diagrams, where I
try to visualize certain things for the customer. (Then) I move to a presentation relatively
quickly, because you need to get to the point even more."
[i25, middle manager, BITS]
We often observed that innovators at BITS profit in two ways from using PowerPoint. First,
they use PowerPoint to create high-level visual illustrations of ideas to advance their
individual sense-making process. Second, they present these PowerPoint slides to others,
which enables alignment with various stakeholders. The combination contributes to the
idea’s maturation:
"When it is about bigger things, I typically create a PowerPoint that simply sketches and
visualizes the underlying idea. This PowerPoint then has the advantage that you can
replicate it, send it around, and view it with different people. This way, you really have
something in your hands. (...) And because of that, you can let other people’s feedback
flow (in) and you can really let your idea grow visually, so to speak. (...) PowerPoint is
always the easiest and best way to replicate such stuff."
[i34, project manager, BITS]
The practice of letting an idea "grow visually" in PowerPoint is central in our field study, and
it is simplified by PowerPoint's sequentiality and modularity. We often observed that many
innovators at BITS exploit PowerPoint's sequentiality to demonstrate how various
components build on one another by gradually constructing complex structures slide by
slide:
“Once there is a degree of structuration, PowerPoint is a good medium, because one can
create graphics relatively fast and simple. […] The PowerPoint slides from (a recent
project) would be a positive example. One of the central elements was the object model,
which we expanded on extensively. […] We could visualize the object model quite well,
and construct additions from one slide to another, whereby we started with the simplest
version and built upon it step by step."
[i7, technical lead, BITS]
We often observed this technique, particularly in innovation workshops that participants held
with customers or project partners, where the innovators usually help the relevant
stakeholders to get a better understanding of the current and future situation by "showing
one process as it is today and then one process with or after the innovation."
[i6, technical lead, BITS]
It is also possible to use this technique to create visual previews of envisaged software
products:
“Show a few screenshots in PowerPoint, indicate with an arrow what will go where, switch
to a live demo and then go back to the presentation.”
[i23, external partner]
At times, this can take unexpected forms, as some participants develop rather original
variations of this technique. People do not only use PowerPoint as a container for

19
screenshots of a prototype – we observed how participants create mocked prototypes in
PowerPoint! One participant describes this PowerPoint prototyping:
“I can take screenshots of the existing application and take wireframes where I do not
have something yet. I file both into PowerPoint and then walk the customer through it step
by step. […] This way, customers get an impression of how the final system would look,
which is important in that design phase, because they can tell us immediately when they
do not need something. When you communicate about these instruments in that phase,
you benefit in two ways: You reflect upon your ideas and strike things through that lead to
bad usability. In addition, you get customer feedback immediately, and that is good
feedback because they see directly where they’re going to.”
[i11, technical lead, BITS]
PowerPoint's modularity further permits consolidating different views and helps people reach
a common understanding. For instance, various visual illustrations can easily be copy-
pasted and modified, so that one can further elaborate the overall picture:
"(In our recent project), we first said, 'Okay, everybody who holds a stake in there,
everybody should draw (their viewpoint) in a PowerPoint.' Then I took those PowerPoints,
pasted all the variations one after another, and then drew my consolidated picture. Then I
revised this consolidated picture with the other people. We sat together and drew the
PowerPoint together."
[i34, project manager, BITS]
Drawing out the essential aspects of an idea is important when aiming to secure ongoing
stakeholder commitment. Once a clear message has been shaped, it can be reused and
shared. We observed that certain PowerPoint slides are often shown repeatedly in various
settings to remind people of the target picture. For instance, one participant compliments a
colleague:
“His slides are always of that kind that the whole (BITS) gets it. (…) It is always
PowerPoint, but what distinguishes his slides from others is pragmatism. [...] It is the kind
of (presentation) that other people can also present, and the message is still loud and
clear.”
[i8, middle manager, BITS]
Sometimes this apparent clarity can also be deceiving. Given their frequent exposure to
polished PowerPoint slides, we observed that viewers tend to have the (often false)
impression that all the important information is on the slides, often ignoring other valuable
knowledge. It is easy to overestimate the maturity of an idea presented in PowerPoint and to
underestimate the necessary completion effort. This bias is exacerbated by the circumstance
that presenters tend to develop a tendency to oversell and exaggerate. We often observed
that innovators were unhappy with ultra-positive feedback about their overly clear
PowerPoint presentation, because they would have appreciated more constructive criticism:
"At the next architecture meeting, I simply showed the presentation for (my idea).
Afterwards, they just said, 'Okay, we do it like that' (...) and I was really excited that it went
down so easily. (...) They said, 'You just do it now. We do the architecture exactly as in
the presentation'. I just told them, 'Well, great that you have so much trust in me, but do
you really know what that means?' I immediately signaled that their envisioned project
duration was not realistic."
[i31, software architect, BITS]

20
In a nutshell, PowerPoint plays an important role in the process of clarification, which is
essential for decision-making in an innovation process.
Antithesis AT2 (Ambiguity): PowerPoint enables the creation of
semantically ambiguous and interpretatively flexible slides, which can
lead to idea ambiguation
We also observed many instances where PowerPoint dilutes content and fosters
ambiguities. This is particularly problematic in the often-observed case when a PowerPoint
presentation serves as the main (sometimes even the only) project documentation. Even if
an inner group of involved people may have managed to obtain a common understanding
through PowerPoint, there is no guarantee that the produced PowerPoint slides convey the
message unambiguously to all stakeholders.
People at BITS often complained about ambiguous, decontextualized, or simply
incomprehensible PowerPoint slides that are sent around via email or archived on intranet
platforms:
"A presentation is not equal to a document, because in a presentation you are on a higher
level of abstraction. If you only write bullet points instead of complete sentences, you are
far from being as precise as you should be to create something that later functions as an
independent communication device. From a document, I generally expect that I can make
sense of it without having to come back to the author. But a slide set is usually linked to
the presentation. A slide set sent via email is insufficient. That was unfortunately often the
case, that we just received last year’s tech talk slides and should do something with
them."
[i28, external partner]
It is not only problematic to overuse bullet point items instead of text, but the lack of
semantic representability makes it very difficult to draw unambiguous and semantically clear
diagrams. In contrast with the abovementioned proponents of modeling in PowerPoint, there
are opponents with strong opinions on this topic:
"I am not one of those people who want to illustrate everything with diagrams. I think that
goals, for instance, must be written down in natural language, because it forces the
person to be precise. However, I think it is absolutely essential to create diagrams with
adequate tools. (...) I have already seen PowerPoint templates for use case diagrams –
totally off the mark, but people actually do this."
[i8, middle manager, BITS]
Repeated efforts to introduce company-wide guidelines that conform to established modeling
standards have failed so far:
“Our software actually has a fantastic object model. However, it is not yet established to
create a simple UML profile for that, such that one could use standardized tools instead of
drawing lines and circles. […] Most people still draw their diagrams with PowerPoint. An
object is a circle in PowerPoint! Why not a simple UML profile with a stereotype?”
[i21, technical lead, BITS]

21
In a nutshell, these findings reveal that content created in PowerPoint is to a certain extent
always ambiguous. While this may be desirable in some circumstances, for example when
having to embrace multiple interpretations, it can be detrimental in others.
5.3 Paradox P3 – Scarcity and Abundance
A third paradoxical situation that emerged from our field study at BITS concerns the
management of innovation-related knowledge created and captured in PowerPoint. On the
one hand, we found that PowerPoint, by constraining the amount of displayable information
and offering restricted functionality, enables the creation of concise, high-level illustrations
that fit on one slide. We observed that people at BITS learned to do more with less, making
a virtue of the relatively scarce range of PowerPoint functions, seeing its constraints as an
exercise to illustrate no more and no less than the essential aspects of an idea.
On the other hand, we found that PowerPoint stimulates the tendency to create overloaded,
overly aesthetic, and overly numerous slides. With the sequentiality of a potentially unlimited
number of slides that a PowerPoint document can contain, people tend to produce a
multitude of slides to clarify a complex topic. We learned that especially inexperienced users
tend to overload slides with content, and with elaborate formatting functions that distract
from the content. Not only can a PowerPoint presentation contain an unlimited number of
slides, but the file can also be copied, disseminated, and stored an unlimited number of
times. These files can contain an abundance of information which is only automatically
processable to a limited extent. We observed that managing an abundance of PowerPoint
files became an innovation bottleneck at BITS. We call this the Scarcity and Abundance
Paradox and examine it in the following sections.
Thesis T3 (Scarcity): PowerPoint's limited functionality and limited
space per slide constrain the amount of conveyable information, which
can lead to information scarcity
In the previous sections, we elaborated on the point that PowerPoint's captivating qualities
help innovators to focus on the essence of ideas, and thereby support clarification. As we
argue in the following paragraphs, taking a closer look at the limited amount of displayable
information in PowerPoint is a good starting point for understanding a third paradox, namely
the co-existence of information scarcity and information abundance.
As we learned in our field study, creating, externalizing, disseminating, and internalizing
knowledge is an essential aspect of innovation processes at BITS. As PowerPoint plays an
important role in all these practices, it is worth examining its effects from a knowledge
management perspective in more detail.
To begin with, PowerPoint slides have a fixed format that is optimized to fit on a screen or a
sheet of paper. Unlike other presentation tools (e.g. Prezi), PowerPoint does not allow
zooming in or out on slides in presentation mode. It is possible to zoom in on a slide up to
400% in editing mode, which implies it would theoretically be possible to fit up to four times
more content on a slide by using smaller fonts and objects. In practice, however, we usually
do not observe such usage, because navigating on heavily loaded slides is cumbersome in
PowerPoint, plus such slides would be very difficult (if not impossible) to read in presentation

22
mode. Not surprisingly, all PowerPoint presentations in our field study conform to the
standard format, exploiting the available space in a legible manner, to varying extents. This
implies that PowerPoint’s capacity to convey larger amounts of complex information is
limited.
In addition, the semantic representability of objects created in PowerPoint is limited and
makes it difficult to capture complex relationships. Semantic mappings between concepts
cannot be represented in PowerPoint at all, which creates an additional barrier to the amount
of representable information:
"I use whatever we've got available. I map my scribbling into PowerPoint slides that will
basically look like process maps. I take snapshots of those, save them as graphic files,
and put them on a set of linked Confluence pages. Ideally, I would have liked to have
linked the hierarchy of maps together, but image mapping is impossible."
[i46, technical writer, BITS]
Notwithstanding the limited range of available functionality in PowerPoint, we observed
people at BITS making a virtue out of this necessity by using PowerPoint as a flexible and
interactive design tool to collaborate with customers and partners. In fact, the limited (and
widely known) functionality of PowerPoint reduces complexity for less technically versed
users. PowerPoint allows people with different levels of technical expertise, with different
degrees of specialization, and from different social worlds to collaborate on a common
object. In such settings, it would be easier to use simpler, lightweight tools with limited
functionality than special purpose, heavyweight tools which may give the designer greater
flexibility but are not suitable in interaction with customers. As opposed to purpose-specific
prototyping tools, which have a steeper learning curve for novice users, PowerPoint allows
even non-expert users to create visual prototypes relatively quickly and easily. In addition,
these PowerPoint-prototypes can be sent around and run everywhere where PowerPoint is
installed, which also enables customers to change them easily. In a nutshell, the scarcity
thesis states that using PowerPoint can lead to information scarcity through its limited
functionality and ability to convey more complex information.
Antithesis AT3 (Abundance): PowerPoint's digitality, integrability, and
sequentiality enable the potentially unlimited (re-)production,
dissemination, and storage of slides, which can lead to information
abundance
As we further learned from our field study, managing knowledge that is captured in various
innovation-related documents is crucial to maintain an overview. Since a larger share of
these documents are PowerPoint presentations, we were also eager to find out how well
these can be managed at BITS. The short answer is: Not that well.
First and foremost, we observed that the sheer amount of PowerPoint presentations and
slides can be overwhelming. Particularly when groups collaborate on a presentation, many
participants complain about the limited control and structured support for collaborative work
practices in PowerPoint. One major disadvantage is that there is no possibility to restrict
create, read, update, and delete operations on PowerPoint presentations other than on the
document level. Neither is there a structured version support. In practice, people who
collaboratively work on PowerPoint presentations tend to work around this drawback by

23
creating many backup copies. As digital artifacts, PowerPoint presentations can easily be
copied, shared, and stored an unlimited number of times.
In addition, PowerPoint presentations can be integrated in a number of intranet applications,
for instance as online slideshows in Atlassian confluence, which is part of the intranet at
BITS. This increases the number of PowerPoint presentations to a level that quickly exceeds
what is tolerable:
"That is a horror for me. (...) If you work with PowerPoint, you will have ten copies of
everything, because everybody wants it just a bit differently and everybody has a slightly
different version in a slightly different location. (…) Anywhere where non-IT-people are
involved, where it moves more toward business and management and sales, they just do
not have structured working practices. (...) Everybody just copy-pastes everything, every
single time."
[i42, technical consultant, BITS]
In the second year of our field study, BITS introduced a groupware solution based on
SharePoint in response to our study's findings about the employees' growing need to
collaborate on documents such as PowerPoint:
"We were doing a team presentation and we each had our own little section in a set of
slides, and just trying to manage that was such a hassle. We were all sending our
updates to each other, merge them and (so on). I would say a collaborative Google docs
system or SharePoint would have been ideal for that."
[i46, technical writer, BITS]
While it would technically be possible to use office web applications like SharePoint or
Google docs, a number of barriers hinder BITS from fully overcoming the PowerPoint
abundance. Apart from the not to be underestimated technical complexity of configuring a
SharePoint solution, legal obligations prevent the company from storing just any kind of
document on cloud servers. After all, many BITS employees deal with security sensitive
customer information and are legally obliged to conform to restrictive banking security laws.
We therefore do not expect that the problem of PowerPoint abundance can in the long run
be fully solved at companies like BITS.
Another challenge with capturing much innovation-related knowledge in many PowerPoint
presentations is that there is no possibility of algorithmically searching and prioritizing
PowerPoint files with respect to their importance. Unlike websites that can be connected with
hyperlinks, which enables algorithms like PageRank to search and sort content according to
their relevance for a specific search term, PowerPoint does not have the functionality to
semantically link objects, slides, or presentations.
In addition to the abundance on the document level, we found that the slides themselves are
also often overloaded. The exaggerated detail on many PowerPoint slides was a popular
subject to mockery in our field study:
"I've never seen a company where the slides have so many details. Obviously, if you
understand that slide you understand it all, but sometimes PowerPoint just goes too far."
[i47, product manager, BITS]

24
For many participants, it is a challenge to satisfy the information needs of various
stakeholders on the one hand, and not provide too much information on the other hand. It
seems to be difficult to create and maintain slide sets that are equally well understood by
different stakeholders, such as developers, requirements engineers, user experience
designers, and managers. This seems to go hand in hand with a tendency to overload slides
with content.
Novice users are particularly fond of overloading slides, exaggerating the amount of
decorations and animations that distract from the essential content. Interestingly, technical
people often seemed to be aware that they tend to overstep the expected level of detail:
"They tend to use these PowerPoint slides with masses of bricks in the wall, and each
one has little labels, and it means absolutely nothing. (...) It is not clear, it is not helpful. It
really blinds you. (...) You cannot see the wood for the trees. It is just too much. (…) I find
myself doing exactly the same thing, (…) giving them too much information. (…) I know it
is a temptation, especially for technical people, to explain everything they understand.
You get carried away."
[i53, software engineer, BITS]
In a nutshell, the abundance thesis states that PowerPoint's digitality, integrability, and
sequentiality tempt users to produce, store, and disseminate an overwhelming number of
PowerPoint presentations that are difficult to manage. It is difficult to find information in this
abundance of PowerPoint documents because search engines cannot semantically process
the content. This poses a real challenge for knowledge management at BITS.
6 Synthesis and Extension
In the previous section, we discussed three PowerPoint paradoxes from the empirical
insights obtained in a qualitative field study of innovation practices at a software firm. Next,
we provide a dialectic synthesis of the three paradoxes through which we provide an explicit
answer to the guiding research question of this paper: How do digital artifacts enable and
constrain innovation practices? We then demonstrate the transferability of our results to
other kinds of digital innovation artifacts via a comparative analysis with modeling tools and
discuss implications for theory and practice.
6.1 Dialectic synthesis of PowerPoint paradoxes
In accordance with Schad et al.'s (2016) definition of paradox, we have identified three
paradoxes by juxtaposing two persistently contradictory yet interdependent elements. In line
with Poole and Van de Ven’s (1989) proposition that coping mechanisms may be developed
via strategies that include acceptance, temporal and spatial separation as well as synthesis,
we synthesize and resolve the three paradoxes below. This dialectic synthesis provides the
foundation of our substantive theory. Table 3 provides an overview of the dialectic synthesis.

25
Table 3 – Dialectic synthesis of PowerPoint paradoxes in innovation practices
Paradox (P)
Thesis (T)
Antithesis (AT)
Synthesis (S)
P1: Freedom
and Captivity
T1: PowerPoint’s
malleability enables
developing and
expressing creative
ideas freely.
AT1: The PowerPoint
template, its lack of
semantic
representability, and
social pressure around
its usage constrain
creative interaction.
S1: PowerPoint
enables individual
freedom in early
innovation process
phases and holds
teams captive later.
P2: Clarity
and
Ambiguity
T2: PowerPoint's
modularity and
sequentiality enable
users to structure
thoughts, simplify
complex issues, and
break down large topic
blocks into smaller ones,
thereby allowing for a
clarification of ideas.
AT2: PowerPoint
enables the creation of
semantically
ambiguous and
interpretatively flexible
slides, which can lead
to an ambiguation of
ideas.
S2: PowerPoint
enables clarification
during the
production of slides,
but also enables
ambiguation during
the consumption of
slides.
P3: Scarcity
and
Abundance
T3: PowerPoint's limited
functionality and limited
space per slide
constrain the amount of
conveyable information,
which can lead to
information scarcity.
AT3: PowerPoint's
digitality, integrability,
and sequentiality
enable the potentially
unlimited (re-
)production,
dissemination, and
storage of slides,
which can lead to
information
abundance.
S3: PowerPoint
enables scarcity of
high-quality
information on the
slide level but
enables abundance
of low-quality
information on the
slide deck level.
Synthesis S1: PowerPoint enables individual freedom in early innovation
process phases and holds teams captive later
The first paradox is the Freedom and Captivity afforded by PowerPoint's malleability and
related social pressures. It is important to note that PowerPoint's Freedom and Captivity can
be beneficial as well as detrimental for innovation. Freedom of creative expression is a basic
prerequisite for being innovative, particularly in the divergent phases of idea generation,
where blue sky thinking and broadening the possible solution space are important (Brown,

26
2009). PowerPoint initially functions as a flexible instrument for the creative individual.
Unrestricted freedom is however not always conducive to the innovation process, because at
some point the number of generated ideas may exceed the available resources for
developing them.
At this point, it seems desirable to narrow down the possible solution space and start a
convergent phase in which decisions about ways to continue are important (cf. Dennis et al.,
2008). Here, PowerPoint functions as a mediating communication device between different
stakeholders, and its constraining qualities can help people to focus on the essence of an
idea. When using PowerPoint for this purpose, users should be aware of the inherent danger
of distancing themselves too much from the idea and the intended audience. Instead of
structuring discussions along PowerPoint slides, the slides should be seen as an anchor to
which people can return when a visual representation of the disputed issues is necessary.
As a coping strategy to deal with this first paradox, temporal separation shows that people
experience the Freedom and Captivity of PowerPoint at different points in time. In early,
divergent phases of the innovation process that require idea generation, PowerPoint lets
users express creative ideas freely through its malleability. But this freedom is never
unrestricted. As Yates and Orlikowski (2007) point out, enablement and constraint cannot be
considered as separate aspects, but rather as two sides of the same coin. In the same way a
freeway can give drivers the impression of a free voyage, while forcing them to stay on the
paved road, PowerPoint's freeing and captivating qualities cannot be separated. Especially
in later, convergent phases of the innovation process that require idea selection and
elaboration, PowerPoint shows its constraints. Without the possibility of semantic
representation, the objects created in PowerPoint cannot be reused outside the program.
Social pressure also forces people to use PowerPoint in certain settings and in specific
ways.
A spatial separation of this paradox shows that people tend to experience more of
PowerPoint's freeing qualities in individual settings (e.g. while editing slides for themselves),
whereas all stakeholders tend to experience more of PowerPoint's captivating qualities in
interpersonal settings (e.g. while presenting slides or collaboratively editing them). In our
field study, people escaped from this captivity by complementing the strengths of
PowerPoint with those of other tools, such as using whiteboards in workshops, dedicated
software modelling, or prototyping tools to professionalize the objects created in PowerPoint.
We found that this exchange could be strengthened by providing better possibilities for
structured import and export.
The distinctive malleability, modularity, and sequentiality of PowerPoint seem to fit the
emergent nature of innovation practices, as people tend to prefer general tools over
specialized ones, particularly when communicating with various stakeholders in different
roles (Carlile, 2002; Cherubini et al., 2007). Contrary to many specialized tools, PowerPoint
provides greater freedom of expression and facilitates the seamless transition between
representing an idea on a slide and the envisaged idea, for instance when people use
PowerPoint to combine prototyping with user interface mock-ups. PowerPoint does not
prescribe narrow syntactics or semantics and users can express themselves freely,
constrained only by the available space per slide, the template, and the lack of semantic
representability. The latter has dire consequences for innovation practices in software firms,

27
as it does not satisfy the requirements for the structured, formal, and automatable working
practices of software engineers.
We have observed that PowerPoint usage can run up against its limits and result in negative
outcomes for innovators. The routinized use of PowerPoint might constrain more creative
practices, such as freehand drawing or simply talking to one another. This can be particularly
detrimental when using PowerPoint to brainstorm ideas at an early phase in the innovation
process. The forced linearity and sequentiality of a PowerPoint presentation constrain free
thinking, creative discussions, and improvisations (cf. Gabriel, 2008), increase the distance
between speaker and audience, lead to a tendency to defer questions to the end, and
reduce the speaker’s responsiveness to the audience (cf. Yates and Orlikowski, 2007).
Synthesis S2: PowerPoint enables clarification during the production of
slides, but also enables ambiguation during the consumption of slides
The second paradox consists of the Clarity and Ambiguity afforded by PowerPoint's
modularity, sequentiality, and flexibility. Analogous to its freeing and captivating qualities,
PowerPoint's clarifying and ambiguating functionalities constitute two persistently
contradictory yet interdependent elements creating a paradox. Contrary to the coping
strategy we identified in the previous paradox – temporal and spatial separation – we
observed that innovators apply a different coping strategy to the Clarity and Ambiguity
paradox. A temporal and spatial separation is possible but would not resolve this paradox
satisfactorily. Instead, innovators at BITS respond to this paradox with acceptance, by
embracing its tension and appreciating their differences (Poole and Van de Ven, 1989).
It is again important to note that PowerPoint's clarifying and ambiguating qualities have
beneficial as well as detrimental effects on innovation practices. Clarifying the essence of an
idea is crucial for making decisions on which direction to take in the innovation process, but
oversimplification can backfire when it leads to overestimating the idea's maturity and
underestimating the necessary completion effort. PowerPoint's sequentiality and modularity
enable users to structure their thoughts and focus on essential aspects, but they should be
frank and honest about the limitations and avoid overselling. Ambiguation is undesirable for
innovation in many instances, as misinterpretations induce flawed decisions and cripple
collaboration. However, embracing flexible interpretations can trigger valuable input from
stakeholders with different viewpoints, and help to identify tension that was previously not
considered. Here, the semantic ambiguity and flexibility of content created in PowerPoint
limit the degree of achievable clarity.
A temporal and spatial separation of this paradox would reveal that different people perceive
PowerPoint's clarifying and ambiguating qualities to varying extents in different settings at
different points in time. For instance, individual PowerPoint users promote their own sense-
making process when producing slides, clarifying essential aspects for themselves. This also
works for small groups who accommodate their conflicting views by collectively producing
clarifying PowerPoint slides in workshops. However, this should not be the final step, as
those who later consume these slides without having participated in their production will
quite likely be exposed to misinterpretation. It can help to write down important aspects in a
proper text document, but there is no guarantee that this will convey the message

28
unambiguously to all stakeholders either, as it depends on the communication skills of the
sender and the cognitive capacity of the receivers.
PowerPoint approaches the status of a universal business language as its usage expands to
ever more practices, such as documentation, software modeling, or prototyping (Buckl et al.,
2015; Gabriel, 2008; Schoeneborn, 2013). Innovators may benefit from network economics
in this regard, as they may reach a variety of stakeholders with different backgrounds (Yoo
et al., 2010) via PowerPoint, which is pre-installed and easy and ready to use on every
computer. Due to the digital nature of PowerPoint, slides can be shared with others without
many intermediate steps, and through various digital channels, for example chat, email or
wiki.
PowerPoint also plays a central role in negotiating with relevant stakeholders because
innovators can use the tool to persuasively display information that does not yet exist.
PowerPoint slides are therefore often a decisive catalyst in mobilizing ideas (cf. Kaplan,
2011; Stark and Paravel, 2008). But that same persuasiveness can backfire when the
audience overestimates the idea’s degree of completion. The phrase paper does not blush,
meaning that one can write everything on paper whether it is true or not, also applies to
PowerPoint, which allows users to visualize ideas, models, and prototypes regardless of
whether they are true or technically accurate. The expected format of a PowerPoint
presentation is often a sales pitch, so presenters tend to signal a preparedness that
overshadows the idea’s degree of maturity. Ambiguities and misunderstandings may
therefore arise when PowerPoint presentations do not provide sufficiently accurate
information on the content, especially when the author is not present.
The ongoing expansion of PowerPoint’s usage contexts may also cause misinterpretations
that result from diverging expectations (Yates and Orlikowski, 2007). For instance,
PowerPoint documents that serve the dual purpose of presentations and project reports
often miss the information requirements of either (Schoeneborn, 2013). Although PowerPoint
documents are not intended to be used in isolation, but rather accompanied by oral
explanation, we have observed that PowerPoint slides are often a medium for software
documentation (cf. Schoeneborn, 2013). Similarly, our analysis of PowerPoint usage for
modeling and prototyping shows that the same usage pattern can be successful in one
context, but a failure in another.
Synthesis S3: PowerPoint enables scarcity of high-quality information
on the slide level, but also enables abundance of low-quality information
on the slide deck level
The third paradox is the Scarcity and Abundance afforded by PowerPoint's digitality,
integrability, and sequentiality. We have observed instances where PowerPoint enables
information scarcity, and instances where PowerPoint enables information abundance.
These contradictory yet interdependent elements exist simultaneously and persist over time,
which again creates a paradox (Schad et al., 2016).
A spatial separation (Poole and Van de Ven, 1989) of the Scarcity and Abundance paradox
shows that Scarcity and Abundance are interdependent and coexist on different levels of
PowerPoint. Quite ironically, it is the scarcity of representable high-quality information on the

29
level of a PowerPoint slide that induces the abundance of low-quality information on the
presentation level. Because the representability of available information is limited on each
slide, people tend to need many slides to support a complex argument, leading to a
fragmentation of coherent content. This has detrimental effects on managing innovation-
related knowledge. It remains a challenge for organizations like BITS to systematically
create, externalize, disseminate, and internalize knowledge. In our field study, the extensive
use of PowerPoint in these practices generated more problems than it solved. PowerPoint
presentations have major constraints as a knowledge repository, because without semantic
representation, relevant PowerPoint documents are hard to search and categorize. Even if
someone is lucky enough to find the desired presentation, the context is often missing.
As our study shows, innovators often turn a necessity into a virtue by using PowerPoint's
limited functionality and limited amount of displayable information to structure thoughts and
focus on the essence of an idea. Existing studies see this mainly as a disadvantage, and
several scholars have criticized PowerPoint usage for causing information scarcity. For
instance, the data visualization expert Edward Tufte has noted that even simple statistical
facts are cumbersome to display on PowerPoint slides, because the fixed format and limited
space per slide would ambiguate the representation of data that could otherwise be
displayed clearly in a table in a text document (Tufte, 2003).
Similarly, human-computer interaction expert Clifford Nass has argued that PowerPoint
tempts users to focus only on outcomes, but not on the process of creating knowledge,
which is why more complex arguments would be impossible to force into the fragmented,
sequential, linear, and rectangular limited slides (Parker, 2001). While our data confirms
these negative effects of PowerPoint-induced information scarcity, it also shows positive
effects, such as stronger focus and simplicity of use, which can lead to the simplification of
complex issues.
Whereas some prior studies mention in passing an abundance of PowerPoint documents in
organizations (Kaplan, 2011; Schoeneborn, 2013), our findings offer new insights on what
happens in large organizations that face the challenge of managing an abundance of
unstructured but important knowledge captured in PowerPoint.
6.2 Extending the Scope of PowerPoint Paradoxes to
Other Digital Innovation Artifacts
From our dialectic synthesis of PowerPoint paradoxes, we have learned that digital
innovation artifacts cannot simply be characterized as either beneficial or detrimental for
innovation. Next, by means of a comparative analysis, we show that our substantive theory
of PowerPoint paradoxes can be meaningfully applied to other kinds of digital innovation
artifacts.
To maximize the transferability of our substantive theory, we focus our comparative analysis
on a digital innovation artifact with characteristics that seem to be quite different from
PowerPoint, namely modeling tools. These are software that facilitates the structured
creation of software models according to a well-defined notation, such as UML or BPMN.

30
Many modeling tools, such as Enterprise Architect, Visio, Visual Paradigm, or Signavio, offer
the semantic representation of created models, allowing automated generation and
actualization of code according to changes in the model. Many computer science, software
engineering, and information systems programmes at universities around the world uphold
the pure doctrine that software designers should use modeling tools, despite contrary
empirical evidence indicating that they prefer to do otherwise in practice (e.g. Cherubini et
al., 2007; Ossher et al., 2010; Sandkuhl et al., 2018, and this paper). We argue in the
following subsections that the paradoxical tension in PowerPoint can also be found in
modeling tools.
Paradox P1: Freedom and Captivity in modeling tools
Compared to PowerPoint, modeling tools are less malleable in that they enforce narrower
usage patterns. Structured modeling is only possible according to the narrowly defined
semantics of a standardized modeling notation.
The advantages of the enforced compliance with metamodels are semantic representability
and support. Most professional modeling tools offer a wide range of comprehensive
templates with basic shapes and forms that allow the creation of extensive models. The
semantically enriched models can easily and conveniently be stored, shared, versioned, and
linked to other artifacts (Bellamy et al., 2011; Ossher et al., 2010). Consistency management
is an automated task, therefore a single consistent change in style or terminology of an
element is automatically transferred throughout many models (Ossher et al., 2010). The
semantic representation of entity relationships also enables the automated generation and
continuous updating of software code according to the most recent version of the model.
This liberates users from many manual and cumbersome tasks and allows them to focus on
the more creative process of generating, developing, and communicating software design
ideas, within the constraints of the modeling language and tool. In short, like PowerPoint,
modeling tools let users express creative ideas freely, although they permit less freedom
than PowerPoint due to lower malleability (cf. T1).
The disadvantage of the constraints imposed by metamodels is that modeling tools have
narrower applicability and are harder to learn, as they force users to follow a predefined
order of development. The latter causes premature commitment by imposing inappropriate
levels of detail and order (Ossher et al., 2010). This is especially detrimental when the
modeling tool distracts from the core sketching experience and interrupts users in their
natural creative flow, preventing meaning to evolve as content is created (Bellamy et al.,
2011). Even modeling tools that support some of the most widespread modeling languages,
such as UML and BPMN, have been criticized for their lack of intuitiveness, frequent
interruptions of the creative flow, not being commonly understood among non-technical
stakeholders, and constraining creative interactions due to a lack of simultaneous
collaboration possibilities (cf. Wüest et al., 2015). In addition, many modeling tools only allow
models to be saved in a proprietary file format, creating lock-in effects and holding users
captive in one tool. In short, like PowerPoint, modeling tools hold people captive and
constrain creative interaction, and they cause captivity to a higher extent than PowerPoint
due to enforced metamodels (cf. AT1).

31
In conclusion, the paradoxical tension between Freedom and Captivity also applies to
modeling tools. Similar to PowerPoint, modeling tools enable individual freedom in early
innovation process phases (though somewhat less) and hold teams captive later (though
somewhat more). The coping strategy described in Synthesis 1 may also be usefully applied
in the context of modeling tools.
Paradox P2: Clarity and Ambiguity in modeling tools
Compared to PowerPoint, modeling tools offer similar degrees of modularity in that the
created models and their parts can easily be cut out, copied, pasted, and grouped in the
same modeling tool. Since the semantic representability of models makes it easier to add
single consistent changes and integrate them into other software development tools,
modeling tools allow a more flexible rearrangement of models outside the forced
sequentiality of PowerPoint (Ossher et al., 2010). Because all models in one notation comply
with the same metamodel, modeling tools permit the structural and behavioral aspects of
software systems to be described more clearly than PowerPoint, and inconsistencies are
less likely to occur between models or between parts of a model. Modeling tools also permit
navigating complexity through graphical refinement (e.g. expanding high-level processes to
show lower-level sub-processes) and aggregation (e.g. collapsing higher-level processes to
hide lower-level sub-processes). In short, like PowerPoint, modeling tools provide a
structured way to simplify complex issues and break down large topic blocks into smaller
ones, thereby allowing for idea clarification (cf. T2).
Our data shows that even skillfully crafted software models are rarely unambiguous in the
lived experience of software design, particularly in communication with customers and
business-oriented stakeholders. Prior studies have shown that many of the most common
modeling languages, such as UML and BPMN, are semi-formal, graphical, general-purpose
modeling languages that allow the expression of model components in natural language,
which is inherently ambiguous (Kamsties and Paech, 2000). Contrary to formally specified
mathematical or computational models, such as petri nets or finite-state machines, which are
not universally used in software development, the created models in UML and BPMN allow
multiple interpretations.
Several authors have argued that one of the most problematic aspects of UML is ambiguity
resulting from a number of overlapping and weakly defined constructs. For instance,
Grossman et al. (2005) show that most software developers think that UML is so
insufficiently specified that it allows for misinterpretation, that there are so many different
UML diagrams and notational systems that it is hard to understand which one to use in a
given situation, and that UML diagrams are represented in so many different places and in
so many forms that it is hard to know how to use them effectively.
Closely related to this, Dijkman et al. (2007) show that it is difficult to provide formal
semantics in BPMN due to ambiguities and complexities resulting from its graphical
constructs and inconsistent terminology. In the light of these shortcomings of modeling tools,
it is not surprising that even software developers often use PowerPoint for modeling
purposes. In short, like PowerPoint, modeling tools, similarly to PowerPoint, enable the
creation of semantically ambiguous and interpretatively flexible models, which can lead to
idea ambiguation (cf. AT2).

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In conclusion, the paradoxical tension between Clarity and Ambiguity also applies to
modeling tools. Similar to PowerPoint, modeling tools enable individual clarification in the
production of models (though somewhat more than PowerPoint) and foster interpersonal
ambiguation during the consumption of models (though somewhat less than PowerPoint).
The coping strategy described in Synthesis 2 may also be usefully applied in the context of
modeling tools.
Paradox P3: Scarcity and Abundance in modeling tools
Compared to PowerPoint, modeling tools offer more comprehensive, purpose-specific
functionality for modeling and allow the creation of more extensive models than those that
would fit on the limited space of PowerPoint slides. However, modeling tools usually lack the
general-purpose functionalities of PowerPoint, such as freeform and metamodel-agnostic
modeling. This limits the conveyable information to what is possible to express according to
the predefined metamodel. Similar to slides created in PowerPoint, models created in
modeling tools are only useful for communicative purposes if they can be clearly illustrated
on surfaces of overseeable size, such as a sheet of paper, a computer screen, or a
projected screen (Becker et al., 2000). After all, any model in software design is by definition
and by necessity a reduction of the reality, embodied in the socio-technical system that the
model is aimed to describe or envision. In short, like PowerPoint, modeling tools constrain
the amount of conveyable information, which can lead to information scarcity (cf. T3).
However, similar to PowerPoint, the digitality, integrability, and limitless refinement
possibilities modeling tools offer also allow information abundance by enabling the
potentially unlimited (re-)production, dissemination, and storage of models (cf. AT3).
In conclusion, the paradoxical tension between Scarcity and Abundance also applies to
modeling tools. Similar to PowerPoint, modeling tools enable scarcity of high-quality
information on the level of individual models but abundance of low-quality information on the
level of collections of models. The coping strategy described in Synthesis 3 may also be
usefully applied in the context of modeling tools.
7 Discussion
7.1 Theoretical implications
This paper develops a substantive theory of the paradoxes of digital innovation artifacts via
an in-depth analysis of PowerPoint usage in the innovation practices of a software firm. Our
data shows that PowerPoint enables and constrains a variety of practices that go beyond the
software’s intended purpose of editing and presenting slides. We had the unique opportunity
to obtain in-depth access to the interpretations of people that are directly immersed with the
phenomenon in practice. We seized this opportunity to critically reflect and dialectically
synthesize the often ambivalent and sometimes contradictory perceptions of people who use
the tool. In addition, we show via a comparative analysis with modeling tools that our
substantive theory can be extended to other kinds of digital innovation artifacts, which

33
answers the guiding research question: How do digital artifacts enable and constrain
innovation practices?
Table 4 – Substantive theory of the paradoxes of digital innovation artifacts
Stability and control
Flexibility and change
Paradox 1
Captivity: Digital innovation
artifacts constrain creative
interaction.
Freedom: Digital innovation artifacts
enable developing and expressing
creative ideas freely.
Paradox 2
Clarity: Digital innovation
artifacts enable users to
structure thoughts, simplify
complex issues, and break
down large topic blocks into
smaller ones, thereby allowing
for a clarification of ideas.
Ambiguity: Digital innovation
artifacts enable the creation of
semantically ambiguous and
interpretatively flexible content, which
can lead to an ambiguation of ideas.
Paradox 3
Scarcity: Digital innovation
artifacts constrain the amount of
conveyable information, which
can lead to information scarcity
Abundance: Digital innovation
artifacts enable the potentially
unlimited (re-)production,
dissemination, and storage of slides,
which can lead to information
abundance.
Table 4 illustrates the core of our substantive theory – three paradoxes that each constitute
two persistently contradictory yet interdependent elements (Schad et al., 2016). The first
paradox juxtaposes the provided Freedom and Captivity of digital innovation artifacts. The
second paradox dialectically examines clarifying and ambiguating effects. The third paradox
capitalizes on the parallel facilitation of information scarcity and information abundance
enabled by digital innovation artifacts. By dialectically synthesizing the three paradoxes, we
follow what Poole and Van de Ven (1989) term a coping strategy that involves temporal or
spatial separation, and acceptance. This allows us to dissolve and reconcile the paradoxical
effects of digital artifacts (Ford and Backoff, 1988)
The two underlying opposing poles find their roots in the ongoing discourse about flexibility
and change versus stability and control of information systems (cf. Ciborra et al. 2000). What
we add to this discourse is that we should not try to simplify the reality into polarized
‘either/or’ distinctions but should reconcile the ‘and’ conjunction by appreciating the complex
interrelationships between the opposing poles (Tilson et al., 2010) and embracing the duality
of paradoxes (Farjoun, 2010). From this perspective, our study contributes rich insights
about the nature of the paradoxes of digital innovation artifacts and how they can be
meaningfully and creatively reconciled in practice.

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From our dialectic synthesis of PowerPoint’s paradoxical effects on innovation practices and
our comparative analysis with modeling tools, we hypothesize that any technology that offers
similar kinds of affordances could have similar paradoxical effects on innovation practices. It
follows that a digital innovation artifact cannot be judged simply against its affordances.
Instead, using digital innovation artifacts generates a distinctive tension that requires a
critical dialectic synthesis to describe the paradoxical effects and identify appropriate coping
strategies. We suggest that a single digital artifact should not be seen as a static part of an
organization, but as an integral part of innovation practices that is enacted in a larger
ecosystem of digital innovation artifacts.
Yates and Orlikowski (2007) pointed out that enablement and constraint of digital
technologies cannot be considered as alternatives (a dualism), but rather as two sides of the
same coin (a duality). From this perspective, the paradoxes developed here reflect the role
of enablement and constraint in that they emphasize the ambivalences of the enabling and
constraining effects of digital artifacts on innovation practices. In fact, our contribution goes a
step further by illustrating how digital innovation artifacts can sustain a chain of practices that
may ultimately appear as not only ambivalent, but contradictory.
This has important implications for the study of affordances. Many existing studies use the
concept of affordances as a way to get things done in a fairly straightforward way. There are
various opinions about affordances, but the general idea is that they enable and constrain
action. In this case, they enable and constrain innovation practices. Our study shows that a
digital artifact can offer an array of affordances that, taken together, have paradoxical effects
on innovation practices. Like organizational paradoxes, which require managers to accept
and embrace rather than try to resist contradictions (Hargrave and Van de Ven, 2017), digital
artifact paradoxes require users to develop paradoxical thinking in order to cope with and
work through contradictions and initiate virtuous cycles of acceptance and synergy. Either
way, the connection between the affordances of digital artifacts and their effect is not as
straightforward as it often seems to be in the existing literature. Instead, it can be
paradoxical. It would be a missed opportunity to overlook or oversimplify these paradoxical
tensions, as they can be a source of productive and creative digital artifact usage. We hope
that our study inspires and guides further research on the paradoxical effects of digital
artifacts on various practices.
7.2 Practical implications
Digital artifacts support innovators throughout the innovation process. For instance, they
enable specifying representations of envisaged new software products. They let users create
concrete manifestations of abstract ideas or concepts that can be collaboratively shared
among teams. Due to their emergent, unfinished, and partial nature, digital innovation
artifacts facilitate communication and collaboration. In this vein, our study has practical
implications for innovating software firms in that it illustrates the tradeoffs of using digital
innovation artifacts and creates awareness of the challenges and opportunities.
Our contribution helps individuals and organizations that experience paradoxes of digital
innovation artifacts to recognize them and embrace them constructively. This includes being
aware of the different settings and points in time where the opposing poles of the paradoxes
occur. While using digital innovation artifacts brings certain benefits, it also comes at a cost.

35
Through their paradoxical effects, digital innovation artifacts support innovation practices,
such as generating ideas, modeling innovative software, persuading decision-makers, or
prototyping. But the extensive use of digital innovation artifacts also generates problems,
such as constrained creativity, misinterpretation, and poorly manageable knowledge.
Our study provides explanations of why practitioners refuse to use the many available
specialized software tools, despite their apparent advantages. From a cost-benefit viewpoint,
one should critically question the practical value of (often expensive) purpose-specific tools
for prototyping and software modeling that are less frequently used than general-purpose
tools.
When it comes to PowerPoint, one should be aware that the tool has reached a level of
acceptance that resembles social coercion, because a PowerPoint presentation is the
expected format in many organizational settings. After years of extensive appropriation and
entanglement in everyday work practices, PowerPoint is strongly anchored in people's
consciousness, resulting in its extensive use as a communication medium in many
situations. Prescribing firm-wide guidelines on which tools to use and which formal
semantics to follow will quite likely foster resistance, as people feel constrained in their
freedom. But without clear guidelines, consistent usage is difficult, if not impossible. An
approach that allows people to freely express ideas in the tools they prefer, while
simultaneously ensuring consistent usage, would be necessary.
Better support to semantically link content and objects in the tools people use, such as
PowerPoint, would be a promising improvement. More recent technological developments
like web-based collaboration tools (e.g. wiki, Google docs, or SharePoint) may be a step in
the direction of improving versioning and searchability, but it is reasonable to assume that
people will continue to use PowerPoint outside these web-based environments. A
PowerPoint presentation can serve as a working document that can be sent via email for
feedback. This way, the sender has a relatively high level of control over how many people
can access and edit it. In contrast, a web-based collaboration tool is more open, and
documents are accessible to many people, with authors having limited control over who can
access and edit them. Further research should explore the potential of extending PowerPoint
functionality with automatic metadata generation and file format conversion (cf. Ossher et al.,
2010).
7.3 Limitations
As the goal of this study was to understand how digital artifacts enable and constrain
innovation practices, we chose qualitative methods and inductive theory building to identify
and describe the phenomenon. Our study focuses on one software firm and one tool to limit
complexity and describe the phenomenon in depth. To the best of our knowledge, no prior
study has yet provided a comprehensive analysis of how different kinds of digital innovation
artifacts enable and constrain innovation practices. Our in-depth analysis of PowerPoint
usage should therefore be seen as only a starting point in a series of further studies that
examine the paradoxical effects of various digital artifacts on innovation practices in
organizations. It could be interesting to study in detail the effects of other artifacts, such as
digital drawing tools or social software. Our extension of PowerPoint paradoxes to modeling
tools provides an example of how such follow-up studies could look like.

36
This paper explores innovation practices at a software firm that may be arguably innovative,
but not necessarily leading edge. Whereas these insights offer possibilities to understand the
effects of digital artifacts on innovation practices, they do not offer comprehensive guidelines
and clues about how to ideally support these practices. Further behavioral field studies may
examine how leading-edge companies innovate with digital artifacts to provide structured
guidance and best practices. Further design-oriented studies may also design, develop, and
evaluate innovative digital artifacts in order to solve some of the challenges identified here.
8 Conclusions
In this paper, we explore how digital innovation artifacts enable and constrain innovation
practices. Through a qualitative field study at an innovating software firm, we show that
PowerPoint, as a dominant digital innovation artifact, offers an array of affordances that,
taken together, can have paradoxical effects. In line with Schad et al.'s (2016) definition of
paradox, we identify three persistently contradictory yet interdependent ambivalences –
namely Freedom and Captivity, Clarity and Ambiguity, and Scarcity and Abundance. By
means of dialectic synthesis, and in accordance with Poole and Van de Ven’s (1989)
propositions, we identify appropriate coping strategies that include acceptance, temporal
separation, and spatial separation. Via a comparative analysis with modeling tools we
demonstrate the transferability of the three paradoxes to different kinds of artifacts and
suggest a substantive theory of the paradoxes of digital innovation artifacts.
Our substantive theory offers rich insight into the complex interrelationships between digital
artifacts and their effects on the underlying practices. We hypothesize that any digital artifact
with similar affordances can have similar paradoxical effects that need to be embraced and
reconciled, rather than regarded in isolation. Our study shows how a careful examination of
such mundane digital artifacts like PowerPoint can reveal complex, multifaceted, and
contradictory tension. This provides a practical example of how an in-depth analysis of
artifact usage can deepen our understanding of the underlying practices (cf. Riemer and
Johnston, 2014).
Our substantive theory offers fruitful suggestions for design researchers. When designing
support for innovation practices, one needs to bear in mind the paradoxical role of digital
innovation artifacts. We suggest that combining the semantic representability of specialized
tools with the malleability general tools would better fit the structured yet flexible innovation
practices of software developers.
Part of our contribution is to condense our rich insights in a way that makes them
transferable to a broader class of companies that share basic assumptions with the software
firm we studied. These could include software firms that encourage employees to innovate
and engage in interdisciplinary IS development, as well as industrial manufacturers,
telecommunication corporations, consulting firms or financial service providers, which today
may also have large software development branches.

37
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