Invisible Cultivation at the Edge: An Exploratory Study of Shadow User Innovation and Information Farming in Enterprise GenAI Adoption

Authors

• Runzhe Wang, Central China Normal University School of Information Management, Wuhan, ChinaFollow
• Xinyuan Lu, Central China Normal University School of Information Management, Wuhan, ChinaFollow
• Xueqing Wang, Wuhan University Economics and Management School, Wuhan, 430072, ChinaFollow
• Rui Zhu, China University of Geosciences Faculty of Engineering, Wuhan, 430074, ChinaFollow

Abstract

This case study of H Group examines how employees covertly adopt consumer-grade GenAI—Shadow AI—to bypass bureaucratic delays during digital transformation. Drawing on Shadow User Innovation and Information Farming theories, the findings demonstrate that employees actively shape AI outputs through iterative prompting. However, this localized innovation fails to scale due to a contextual competence gap, as general AI lacks proprietary enterprise knowledge, forcing employees to incur cognitive costs that offset efficiency gains. This labor-intensive process, which we theorize as “Information Farming,” remains entirely invisible to organizational learning mechanisms. This phenomenon is theorized as the Edge Lock-in Effect, revealing how micro-level adaptations, rather than driving bottom-up innovation, paradoxically reinforce organizational inertia by creating a “learning blind spot”—a finding that challenges the optimistic diffusion assumptions of classic user innovation theory.

Recommended Citation

Wang, Runzhe; Lu, Xinyuan; Wang, Xueqing; and Zhu, Rui, "Invisible Cultivation at the Edge: An Exploratory Study of Shadow User Innovation and Information Farming in Enterprise GenAI Adoption" (2026). ICEB 2026 Proceedings (Beijing, China). 53.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/iceb2026/53