Disruptive or sustaining? Depends on developed or developing

The literature on Information Technology (IT) enabled innovation, like innovation literature more generally, has focused predominantly on work conducted in ‘developed’ countries. Historically this has been due to a lack of empirical evidence collected in ‘developing’ countries and access to comparable examples of innovation. This situation results in the application of developed world ideas to innovation in the developing world. Whether and how the adoption of IT-enabled innovation in developing countries differs from developed countries thereforeremains an unexplored question (World Bank 2008). These findings bring into question the direct application in developing countries of innovation models and frameworks created through the study of innovations in developed countries, specifically of disruptive innovation. To explore this hypothesis the adoption of internet and mobile banking (IMB) in India and Australia are discussed. It was found that in India IMB satisfied an unmet customer need that had not previously existed in the form of banking (Christensen & Raynor 2003) and in the process disrupted traditional and informal finance methods. On the other hand, the adoption of IMB in Australia improvedand sustained existing banking methods, providing greater efficiency. IT-enabled innovation appears to follow an opposite path in developed nations to that in developing nations driven by differences in consumer needs.