Copyright: INFORMS holds copyright to this Articles in Advance version, which is made available to institutional subscribers. The file may not be posted on any other website, including the author’s site. Please send any questions regarding this policy to permissions@informs.org. Information Systems Research Articles in Advance, pp. 1–12 issn 1047-7047  eissn 1526-5536 inf orms ® doi 10.1287/isre.1100.0318 © 2010 INFORMS Research Commentary Digital Infrastructures: The Missing IS Research Agenda David Tilson Simon Graduate School of Business, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York 14267, david.tilson@simon.rochester.edu Kalle Lyytinen Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio 44106, kjl13@case.edu Carsten Sørensen Department of Management, London School of Economics and Political Science, London WC2A 2AE, United Kingdom, c.sorensen@lse.ac.uk S ince the inauguration of information systems research (ISR) two decades ago, the information systems (IS) field’s attention has moved beyond administrative systems and individual tools. Millions of users log onto Facebook, download iPhone applications, and use mobile services to create decentralized work organizations. Understanding these new dynamics will necessitate the field paying attention to digital infrastructures as a cate- gory of IT artifacts. A state-of-the-art review of the literature reveals a growing interest in digital infrastructures but also confirms that the field has yet to put infrastructure at the centre of its research endeavor. To assist this shift we propose three new directions for IS research: (1) theories of the nature of digital infrastructure as a separate type of IT artifact, sui generis; (2) digital infrastructures as relational constructs shaping all traditional IS research areas; (3) paradoxes of change and control as salient IS phenomena. We conclude with suggestions for how to study longitudinal, large-scale sociotechnical phenomena while striving to remain attentive to the limitations of the traditional categories that have guided IS research. Key words : generativity; digital infrastructure; control points; IT artifact; IS research agenda History : Vallabh Sambamurthy, Senior Editor. This paper was received on July 4, 2010, and was with the authors 2 1 2 weeks for 1 revision. Published online in Articles in Advance. 1. Introduction In the 20 years of ISR’s existence, pervasive digital- ization of organizational life has become the “new” reality (Yoo 2010). Understanding the antecedents and consequences of this phenomenon, commonly referred to as digital convergence, forms a signifi- cant opportunity for information system research. The IS field traditionally has attended to the interac- tions between specific classes of information technol- ogy and their social and organizational effects. Yet, its top journals largely have remained silent about the impact of the one class of IT artifacts—digital infrastructures—that underlies digital convergence. Infrastructure in general can be defined as the basic physical and organizational structures needed for the operation of a society or enterprise, or the services and facilities necessary for an economy to function (Wikipedia). Accordingly, digital infrastruc- tures can be defined as the basic information tech- nologies and organizational structures, along with the related services and facilities necessary for an enterprise or industry to function. These infrastruc- tures can be further defined with respect to the entity being supported or enabled as global, national, regional, industry, or corporate infrastructures. Mor- phologically, digital infrastructures can be defined as shared, unbounded, heterogeneous, open, and evolv- ing sociotechnical systems comprising an installed base of diverse information technology capabilities and their user, operations, and design communi- 1 Published online ahead of print November 18, 2010