The internet as a socio-technological space
Even though the internet is only less than 40 years old (Abbate, 1999) and has been a tool of mass media only since the mid 1990’s, it is used today by more than 1,08 billion people around the planet. It has been described as cyberspace (Benschop, 2001) and as noossphere (mindsphere, (Arquilla & Ronfeldt, 1999; Senges, 2002)) both terms see a socio-technological (i) environment suitable for human development similar to Vogotzky’s (Mejías, 2004; Watson, Audio Lectures) zone of proximal development, and surely beyond the technology from which it is composed.

This research’s perspective on the internet is affiliated with the field of social study of technology (ii), “a perspective which encompasses a range of sociological and historical approaches that place technology – of whatever size, shape or scale – firmly within ‘the social’. Technology is not ‘outside’ of society but a carrier and mediator of social relations, meaning and interests” (McLaughlin, 1999, p. 6). This perspective goes against technology as bits & pieces artifacts, and it is also distinct from a managerial perspective on technology. “Instead [technology] is to be regarded as a socio-technical ensemble, whose component parts and their composition are shot through with, and held together by social relations among people, as much as by more physical ties such as screws, bolts or electrons” (ibid) It is hence the role of the internet as ‘knowledge media’ (Daniel, 1999) that makes the innovations a relevant subject for investigation of knowledge entrepreneurship. Eisenstadt, who according to Daniel introduced the term, states that knowledge media are about capturing, storing, imparting, sharing, accessing and creating knowledge, and it is exactly in this regard the this study is interested in the universities’ practice in realizing such potentials in internet based innovations.
The role of universities
The question then is, how do universities, some of which originally participated in the creation of the cyberspace, act out their role in the development and exploitation of the internet’s potentials?

Overall, universities are still on the forefront of internet use and development. There are few institutions which have embraced email especially as rapidly into their organizational repertoire, also- universities were among the first institutions to use websites as a means of marketing and information. Thus it is true that much more could be done, and some pioneering universities are constantly pushing the limits, but given the well established and proved practices of academic conduct, it comes as no surprise that internet-based innovations are not centrally rolled out throughout the whole university, but rather experimented with by innovators, and early adopters and then gradually spread across departments (Bates, 2000; Bates & Poole, 2003).

Universities strategic reaction and outlook to the flood of technological innovations has been researched in 2002 by Collins and van der Wende, et.al. targeting all universities in Netherlands, Germany, the United Kingdom, Australia, Sweden, Finland, and the United States of America (there only a sample of 200 institutions was targeted). They report (Collis & Wende, 2002) ‘continual but non revolutionary change’. From the four proposed scenarios for the future development they find that while universities are and will be experimenting with all options, no radical change is to be expected. The report is a great indicator for what academia in Europe and the US believe is happening. We can however – as is the case for all future assessments – be assured that the real impact of the net will most likely be different than these early assessments .

While several studies discuss certain aspects of internet-based innovation appropriation, such as e-learning strategies (Zellweger-Moser, 2003), no systemic approach has yet been applied. The common agreement is that the integration of new tools into university practice requires more than just cosmetic adaptations and needs to be approached strategically. Many studies report (see Zellweger for list) that the organization of education and research technology support structures and the effect on faculty behavior are not well understood. This relationship is problematic and of importance for HEI and therefore needs to be studied in more depth.

“Moreover, there is a gap between vision and reality. Or put differently, the ‘Virtual University’ works in theory but not in practice (Pollock & Cornford, 2002). Many institutions are still struggling to overcome the "pioneer" or the "1000 flowers blooming" phase, while trying to move into a phase of more mainstream engagement.” (Collis & Wende, 2002) The concepts and results developed in this research intend to contribute to a better understanding of what conditions are favorable to the optimal exploitation of the potential of the internet.


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(i) Within this scheme technological change and organizational change are mutual processes therefore one can speak of techno-organizational change. One can speak of a process of socio-technological deconstruction and reconstruction that is happening when new technologies are introduced.

(ii) Another example of a similar study is McLaughlin (McLaughlin, 1999). She recounts the case study they had conducted with a medium size English university, which was partaking in an effort to introduce a MAC (Management and Administrative Computing) system. The process took the enormous time of 8 years and was considered by many participants to be a failure. Partially because there was no experience in engaging in such a project on the administrative side, partially because it a collaborative development effort and all sorts of approaches were taken, and maybe most decisively the Higher Education sector was forced to undergo some major transformations during the implementation time of the project so that the needs were analyzed for a time before the development was planned. Another criticized step was the installation of the students module before the finance model, as the latter was seen to be key for the smooth administration of all other parts of the system. One positive effect of the mess and problems that were encountered during the long project time was that networking and knowledge sharing (problem solving) created new inter- and intra-organizational networks.
Allow me to remind the reader of Bill Gates’ claim that a memory of 640kb will be sufficient for all home PC users. A reminder that even the thought leaders in a field can be way of with their future forecasts.

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