Preventive innovation differs from ordinary innovation. The innovation diffusion literature claims that the economic benefits of preventive innovation to adopters, such as ensuring information security, are mainly intangible and often time-delayed and sometimes only adopted for incidents that may never occur. Adopter communication about preventive innovation therefore seems to be crucial.

Using the example of the information security standard ISO/IEC 27001, we examine how communication of preventive innovations is shaped by its adopters. By analyzing texts about the information security standard ISO/IEC 27001 on Swedish corporate websites using computational linguistics tools and classical content analysis, we could identify, first, different adoption approaches of preventive innovation driven, second, by three modes of data governance: agency, stewardship and brokerage. Third, we provide evidence that the communication of preventive innovation depends on its data governance mode, but, fourth, also on the economic benefits of preventive innovation for adopters.

Our contribution to the innovation literature is twofold. First, the concept of preventive innovation originally presented by Rogers (1995) is revived and further developed. Comparing it to its original scope, we show that preventive innovation can be meaningful for adopting organizations not only when they go through all possible adoption phases identified by Rogers (1995). Also an economic benefit from preventive innovation is possible. Both aspects, adoption approach as well as economic opportunity strongly shape the production of meaning in communication about preventive innovation. Second, we show that computational linguistics can support qualitative research in the study of meaning production in communication, especially when dealing with large amounts of data, for instance, gained from corporate websites.