Towards a Taxonomy of Technological Innovations in Higher Education

The process of innovation within Higher Education is complex and is limited by internal structural hinderances, lack of knowledge on various technological innovations and their use. Academics in this field have suggested that the limitation stems from lack of comprehension of the fundamental characteristics of the different innovations. The study aims to build towards addressing this problem through the development of a taxonomy to provide distinguishing characteristics of the various innovations available. To develop the taxonomy, the taxonomy development method by Nickerson, Varshney and Muntermann [1] was adopted. A systematic literature review was conducted to discover the dimensions for the conceptual-to-empirical approach and an empirical analysis on a sample of innovations that are said to have a disruptive potential was done to discover additional dimensions. The resulting taxonomy has seven different dimensions with two to three characteristics in each. The findings yielded different categorization of innovations according to disruptive, sustaining or efficiency innovation. The taxonomy should be of value for any scholar interested in innovation in Higher Education.