Relevance in Information Systems Research

Abstract

Information Systems as an academic discipline makes two contributions to society. The first, knowledge exploration, is the creation of new knowledge that is not -- and should not be -- relevant to today's practitioner. The goal of knowledge exploration is to change the future, not improve the present. The second, knowledge exploitation, is the dissemination of knowledge to serve current practice (and to train future practitioners, our students). While I believe we have done a good job of knowledge exploration, I believe we need develop new vehicles to promote, nurture, and validate knowledge exploitation much like our academic cousins in Medicine, Engineering, and Computer Science.