Abstract:
Conceptually, new technologies have affected individuals and organisations resulting to the rethinking of all
the fundamental operating assumptions of many organisations and the roles in them. Organisations exist in a
rapidly changing environment, necessitating responsive and often radical strategic capabilities. This strategic
move has allowed organisations to create new demand, open up new market space, apply creative solutions
to problems and exploit opportunities to enhance or to enrich people’s lives - innovation. The Information
Technology (IT) industry is competitive by any market criteria used. Unlike its counterparts from traditional
manufacturing industries, IT products have short shelf-lives (Mody et al., 1987) and appeal for customers
and consumers. Survival for IT firms thus depends on a constant stream of new products and/or incremental
efficiencies of existing products from the firm’s innovation assembly line. Within the technology industry, the
market for IT products is perfectly competitive with little or no barriers to entry. This paper focuses on investigating why matured stage IT firms finds it so difficult to innovate. It will also assess some relevant growth
strategies and further review related literature on how matured IT firms can build an organisational culture
that promotes innovation. A new conceptual framework necessary to formulate strategies for surviving will
also be developed and diagrammatically represented.
