A roadmap to adopting emerging technology in e-business: an empirical study

Abstract

This study explores the readiness of enterprises for developing emerging e-business technology. A three-staged e-business technology roadmap is proposed, from pre-e-business, to transactional e-business, and then to on-demand e-business. We use the diffusion of innovation theory to identify a series of enterprises’ internal capabilities and environmental drivers that can explain enterprises’ e-business adoption along our proposed roadmap. The model is validated in a survey of 175 businesses from the Taiwanese PC industry. The results show that enterprises’ internal capabilities are more influential than the environmental drivers when the enterprises move from the pre-e-business stage to the transactional e-business stage. As enterprises start to migrate to on-demand e-business, environmental factors play a critical role in determining the adoption. The implications of this study are multi-fold. Enterprises can use this model to evaluate their current readiness for the adoption of emerging e-business technology. By locating their current status in the roadmap, they can also understand the steps they should take to improve their readiness.