IT Reliability and Innovation in SMEs: Empirical Research

Purpose: Analysis of theoretical views and empirical research concerning the relation between IT reliability and the innovation level of organizations. Implications: Findings enable us to indicate the direction of further promising research that should concern the relationship between IT reliability and innovation in the context of stages of the innova tion process and different types of innovation, which should be analyzed separately. Methodology: The pilot (sample: 100) and main (sample: 400) survey was conducted in 2017 among SMEs located in Poland. Findings: The empirical analysis shows that there is a relation between IT reliability and innova tion level. Moreover, information reliability appears as a factor that may influence the organization’s ability to create innovations. Furthermore, service reliability proves to correlate with innovation level as well, which provides additional conclusions that support the realization that service is an important feature, which may also influence employees’ ability to employ IT appropriately and efficiently, thereby supporting the generation of innovation. Value: The article presents a new factor that may influence the possibility of creating various types of innovations. Usually, papers focus on IT systems, while the relationship between IT reliability and innovation allows us to look deeper into this relationship.