Summary

Information products proliferating in the contemporary information society such as Twitter, Facebook, Tablets, Smartphones, and Cloud services deeply affect the daily life of people and raise new challenges for organizations.
Traditional management models no longer suffice to deal with the plethora of these ingenious technologies. They assume the industrial paradigm: managing scarce resources for achieving the goals of the enterprise. Non-rational values are part and parcel of the abundance-driven information society and confront decision makers now to make responsible choices. Sometimes informational products unwittingly jeopardize critical systems in the enterprise, while others provide great opportunities for innovation.
Information governance requires more than the traditional instruments in order to consider the complex meanings of the products of the information society as well as assessing their innovation potential. Governing actors should be able to discuss a product without being a subject matter expert, understand how its meanings affect the behavior of the organization and its users, and identify its innovation potential.
The first step in innovation is: seeing the possibilities, which starts with appropriate image building. That includes explicating what products of the information society offer, what they mean to the organization and its users, and how they assess against the core principles of innovation.