When bringing technologies into the workplace, it pays to be realistic. Often, for instance, bringing new digital technology into an organization does not radically improve a firm’s operations. Despite high-level planning, a more frequent result is the messy process of frontline employees figuring out how they can get tech tools to help them to some degree.

That task can easily fall on overburdened workers who must grapple with getting things done but don’t always have much voice in an organization. So, isn’t there a way to think systematically about implementing digital technology in the workplace?

MIT Professor Kate Kellogg thinks there is and calls it “experimentalist governance of digital technology”: Let different parts of an organization experiment with the technology—and then centrally remove roadblocks to adopt the best practices that emerge, firm-wide.

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