What do practitioners want from us?

What do academics have to offer that practitioners do not already have? They have the data academics want. They can analyse it by themselves, sometimes better than academics. They are also not reading our articles. So why would academics bother engaging with them? Why should we even bridge that perceived or existing gap between theory and practice? Because academics need to dip their toes into practice, and they need to mingle with industry to stay relevant. So says Jonny Holmström, director and co-founder of the Swedish Center for Digital Innovation. He has been at the forefront of doing academic research that blends theory and practice, rigor and relevance, and he knows a thing or two about how to do so successfully. His secret? Maximize the gap between academics and practitioners, don't close it. References Holmström, J., Magnusson, J., & Mähring, M. (2021). Orchestrating Digital Innovation: The Case of the Swedish Center for Digital Innovation. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 48(31), 248-264. Churchman, C. W. (1972). The Design of Inquiring Systems: Basic Concepts of Systems and Organization. Basic Books. Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory. Oxford University Press. Holmström, J. (2022). From AI to Digital Transformation: The AI Readiness Framework. Business Horizons, 65(3), 329-339. Recker, J., Bockelmann, T., & Barthel, F. (2024). Growing Online-to-Offline Platform Businesses: How Vytal Became the World-Leading Provider of Smart Reusable Food Packaging. Information Systems Journal, 34(1), 179-200. Abbasi, A., Somanchi, S., & Kelley, K. (2025). The Critical Challenge of using Large-scale Digital Experiment Platforms for Scientific Discovery. MIS Quarterly, 49, https://doi.org/10.25300/MISQ/2024/18201. Sandberg, J., Holmström, J., & Lyytinen, K. (2020). Digitization and Phase Transitions in Platform Organizing Logics: Evidence from the Process Automation Industry. MIS Quarterly, 44(1), 129-153. Werder, K., Seidel, S., Recker, J., Berente, N., Kundert-Gibbs, J., Abboud, N., & Benzeghadi, Y. (2020). Data-Driven, Data-Informed, Data-Augmented: How Ubisoft's Ghost Recon Wildlands Live Unit Uses Data for Continuous Product Innovation. California Management Review, 62(3), 86-102. Sting, F. J., Tarakci, M., & Recker, J. (2024). Performance Implications of Digital Disruption in Strategic Competition. MIS Quarterly, 48(3), 1263-1278. Tarakci, M., Sting, F. J., Recker, J., & Kane, G. C. (2024). Three Questions to Ask About Your Digital Strategy. MIT Sloan Management Review, July, https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/three-questions-to-ask-about-your-digital-strategy/. Davenport, T. H. (1993). Process Innovation: Reengineering Work Through Information Technology. Harvard Business School Press. Davenport, T. H. (1998). Putting the Enterprise into the Enterprise System. Harvard Business Review, 76(4), 121-131. Schecter, A., Wowak, K. D., Berente, N., Ye, H., & Mukherjee, U. (2021). A Behavioral Perspective on Service Center Routing: The Role of Inertia. Journal of Operations Management, 67(8), 964-988. Sundberg, L., & Holmström, J. (2024). Innovating by Prompting: How to Facilitate Innovation in the Age of Generative AI. Business Horizons, 67(5), 561-570. Kronblad, C., Essén, A., & Mähring, M. (2024). When Justice is Blind to Algorithms: Multilayered Blackboxing of Algorithmic Decision Making in the Public Sector. MIS Quarterly, 48(4), 1637-1662.