The work of information systems (IS) departments, including planning, systems development, and supporting business operations, is knowledge-intensive and requires both business and technological knowledge, as well as both internal and external expertise. IS departments’ performance, in particular, is related to the extent to which they can acquire, store, retrieve and apply knowledge effectively (Gold et al., 2001; Lee and Choi, 2003). According to the resource-based view (RBV) (Barney, 1991; Wernerfelt, 1984), strategic value and competitive advantage lie in the management and use of knowledge (Grant, 1996). As a result, superior performance by an IS department rests in its timely and efficient application and blending of multiple knowledge resources in distinct processes (Tesch et al., 2009). However, IS departments face a range of new challenging problems that cannot necessarily be overcome using solutions based on applying accumulated experience in traditional ways. Knowledge-management researchers have suggested that solving these intractable problems will require executives to use existing knowledge in novel ways, by slightly twisting it or analogizing from other areas (Nag and Gioia, 2012). The present study endorses Nag and Gioia’s (2012) proposition that there are two types of uncommon use of knowledge: adaptation and augmentation. The first refers to applying knowledge to modify and improve specific operational activities, whereas the second is defined as criticizing what is known in order to generate new understandings that can aid problem-solving. Using knowledge in novel ways is critically important in a turbulent environment (Nag and Gioia, 2012), and RBV holds that the superior performance of IS departments in terms of efficiency and innovation will yield competitive advantages for their firms. In IS contexts, there has been extensive research on knowledge management and its components, including knowledge sharing (Chang et al., 2013; Park and Lee, 2014), knowledge transfer (Hsu et al., 2014; Teo and Bhattacherjee, 2014), knowledge integration (Alavi and Tiwana, 2002; Patnayakuni et al., 2007), the use of information technology (IT) to support knowledge management and storage (Addas and Pinsonneault, 2016), among others. The rapid proliferation of IT including clouds and a range of other knowledgemanagement tools makes it easy to preserve and access vital knowledge. But how can IS departments help their firms to create unique value when their rivals can also access the same information? Previous studies on IS knowledge management have only focused on how to effectively and apply knowledge stored in knowledge-management systems or absorbed from external sources (Alavi and Leidner, 2001; Roberts et al., 2012), i.e., common use of knowledge. The present work, in contrast, proposes that IS departments need to use knowledge in new ways to improve systems-development processes and create innovative IS, i.e., engage in uncommon use of knowledge.