The why and what of AI deployment and innovation in companies - results and learning from a systematic literature research enlightened by the capability theory

Ruotsalainen, Seppo ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7316-5541, Hokkanen, Paivi ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0002-3767-6816, Porras, Jari ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3669-8503 and Kuivalainen, Olli ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5291-2592 (2024) The why and what of AI deployment and innovation in companies - results and learning from a systematic literature research enlightened by the capability theory. International Journal of Innovation Management, 28 (7). 2450029. ISSN 1363-9196

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Abstract

Despite soaring interest in Artificial Intelligence (AI), only one-tenth of companies have reported tangible business results. We conducted a Systematic Literature Research on peer-reviewed reports to establish an updated status and baseline of AI deployment for research and companies. We analysed selected peer-reviewed articles for deployment objectives, approaches, results, and learnings. This research confirms that AI is still at the early stages of deployment and innovation in companies. Deploying AI successfully represents a management — rather than a technology — challenge. It requires more cognisance, innovation, learning, and effort than generally thought. Through the results and a novel conceptual framework, this research increases the knowledge and emphasises the importance of the pre-deployment from theoretical and practical viewpoints. The Sensing stage of the Dynamic Capability theory aligns well with the developed pre-deployment concept. We propose several research topics to increase the knowledge and theoretical understanding of deploying AI cognisably for business and stakeholder benefits.