Diffusion of Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing: An Exploratory Investigation of Research and Practice

This empirical study extends current Business Intelligence (BI) and Data Warehousing (DW) research by studying the discourse life cycle of IS fashion waves. Using bibliographic methodology and applying Diffusion of Innovation and Management Fashion theories, BI/DW related papers and articles were gathered from both, academic research and practitioner journals, published from 1995 to 2009. Formal diffusion models were employed to examine the level of adoption of BI/DW based on these papers and articles. Our findings demonstrate mixed-influence fashion waves of BI/DW across the academic and private sector communities, with the practitioner´s research being influenced more by external factors compared to academic and academic research diffusion progressing differently than practitioner´s literature diffusion and the latter has comparatively slowed down.