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Learning the Innovation Journey: Order out of Chaos?
Abstract
This paper examines whether the developmental process of two biomedical innovations followed either (1) an orderly periodic progression of stages or phases, (2) a random sequence of chance "blind" events, or (3) a seemingly random process of chaotic events. Various diagnostics are applied to distinguish periodic, chaotic, and random patterns in time series data on innovation development events. We find that the actions and outcomes experienced by innovation teams exhibit a chaotic pattern during the initial period of innovation development, and an orderly periodic pattern during the ending development period; however, exogenous context events exhibit a random pattern during both the beginning and ending periods of innovation development. These research findings, if substantiated in other studies, significantly alter prior views of innovation and learning processes. The two most commonly-used explanations of the innovation process, that it follows either an orderly periodic sequence of stages or a random sequence of "blind" events, are not valid where chaos is found. Chaos tells us that the innovation process consists of a nonlinear dynamical system, which is neither orderly and predictable nor stochastic and random. The findings of chaos also expand existing definitions of organizational learning. Learning in chaotic conditions can be viewed as an expanding and diverging process of discovery. Learning during more stable and periodic conditions is viewed as a narrowing and converging process of testing. Timing of transitions from chaos to periodic patterns may explain whether decision or action rationality prevails. Hence, the difference between behavioral learning theorists and cognitive learning theorists may be just a matter of time.
... These uncertainties stem from the fact that future events do not follow the course of the past and that knowledge of the future is always incomplete (Jalonen, 2011). Although the innovation process is complex and chaotic, it is not random (Cheng and Van de Ven, 1996). Since a tight relationship exists between chaos and order, innovation can be coordinated in the desired direction (Dolan et al., 2003). ...
... The idea of innovation management with controlled chaos is not new (e.g. Quinn, 1985;Cheng and Van de Ven, 1996;Jayanthi and Sinha, 1998). For more than 2 decades, research has sought to address the possibility of managing innovation complexities by investigating techniques that improve innovation performance. ...
... This study defines innovation processes as activities aimed to develop product or process innovations. The success of innovation processes can be hindered by excessive control and unrestrained freedom, and the innovation potential thus lies at the intersection of order and chaos (Cheng and Van de Ven, 1996). ...
Purpose
In innovation management, the complexity inherited in the supply network may be necessary for success. This study aims to holistically examine innovation complexities and system attractors within a hierarchically nested supply network and explore how they dynamically interact and influence adaptive innovation processes.
Design/methodology/approach
Taking a complexity theory perspective, we employed a methodological bricolage approach using a single case study with multiple embedded units of analysis – namely, a supply network encompassing 36 firms. We drew upon primary data obtained from 42 interviewees and rich secondary data, and we employed a temporal exponential random graph model to examine the micro-foundations of the evolution of the sampled supply network over a decade.
Findings
This study presents a comprehensive overview of the innovation complexities—relational, temporal, dynamic, operational and structural – and how they manifest within a supply network. It also identifies three systemic attractors – point, periodic and strange – and elucidates their relationships with the complexities and their impact on innovative supply network dynamics. The resulting conceptual framework and working propositions provide a detailed perspective on the complex interplay between balanced order and chaos and the potentially unbalanced innovation states within a supply network.
Originality/value
This research offers an in-depth perspective on the innovation complexities and dynamic attractors within a supply network from a holistic, multilevel perspective. It advances complexity theory and deepens the understanding of supply networks as complex adaptive systems.
... If innovation is widely seen as a core engine of growth and progress in society, its daily management in organizations is far from the image of a well-oiled machine. Innovation management is often random and chaotic, and at best irregular, as it requires making countless decisions to solve complex problems with creativity (Cheng and Van de Ven, 1996;March and Simon, 1993). Instead of an orderly process to reach predefined goals with established rules, innovation management often deviates from a rational process and organizations struggle to make decisions when managing innovation. ...
... Yet given its complex, creative, and open-ended nature, innovation can be challenging to manage and organize. The innovation process is often thought of as random, irregular, or chaotic, and its rate of success is usually low (Chen and Adamson, 2015;Frishammar et al., 2010;Cheng and Van de Ven, 1996). From this perspective, prior research has understood innovation as bricolage, where serendipity matters, defying the causal and rational logic promoted by management (Baker and Nelson, 2005;Fisher, 2012;Garud et al., 2018). ...
Given innovation's chaotic nature, organizations struggle to make decisions when managing innovation. Both academics and practitioners hope artificial intelligence can solve this problem and provide a solution to support and rationalize innovation processes. The literature on this topic, however, is fragmented. The goal of this paper is to systematically review the literature to guide future research. We build on the garbage can model, as our findings reveal that the rationalizing influences of AI on innovation management as a decision-making process is varied. Our results reveal four main influences that pave the way for future research: AI augmenting rationality, AI augmenting creativity, AI renewing the organizing of innovation, and AI triggering new challenges. Taken together, these findings suggest AI is not a tool that uniformly optimizes innovation management and decision-making but rather, is best understood as a multifaceted solution, with intended and unintended rationalizing influences, in search of problems to solve.
... Organizations learn through exploring new possibilities and exploiting old certainties [21]. Exploration uses the knowledge that shifts away from a firm's existing knowledge base [22,23] and includes search, discovery, experimentation, and innovation activities [21,24]. According to March [21], the essence of exploration is experimentation with new alternatives, and the returns are uncertain, distant, and often negative; meanwhile, the essence of exploitation is the refinement and extension of existing competencies, technologies, and paradigms. ...
... According to March [21], the essence of exploration is experimentation with new alternatives, and the returns are uncertain, distant, and often negative; meanwhile, the essence of exploitation is the refinement and extension of existing competencies, technologies, and paradigms. Exploitation is also associated with utilizing an organization's existing knowledge base [23] and includes activities such as the refinement, implementation, and execution of a particular action [21,24]. ...
This study aims to understand the relationship between female corporate leadership and firm performance based on exploration and exploitation strategies using a global enterprise data set. Previous studies report conflicting evidence of female corporate leadership on firm performance. This study applies an exploration–exploitation framework and suggests that the relative advantage of female corporate leadership relies upon certain aspects of the firm’s growth strategy. The empirical evidence confirms that the relative advantage of female corporate leadership resides more in the exploitation than the exploration aspect of a firm’s growth strategy compared to male corporate leadership. The study thus offers important implications for broader business practices when considering the alignment between the choice of corporate leadership and firm growth strategy.
... While exploration strategies imply searching, experimenting, risk taking, and discovering behaviour that is associated with improvised, autonomous, and chaotic system structures, exploitation strategies focus on refinement, selection, efficiency, and implementation behaviour that is associated with routine, controlled, and bureaucratic system structures (Ancona et al.2001, Cheng andVan de Ven 1996,).Furthermore, these two strategies have an impact on the returns of the company. While returns caused by exploration are more distant in time and have a more variable character, those caused by exploration result out of a more stable performance with lower variability and are less distant in time. ...
... Companies must be careful not to fall into the efficiency trap. Agility encompassed behaviour strategies such as the capability to adapt or respond in an accelerated manner to a changing marketplace environment and undertake risk and change management, and is therefore related to explorative innovations, which imply firm behaviour characterised by search, discovery, experimentation, risk taking, and innovation (Cheng and Van de Ven 1996). Thus, companies have to be careful to not fall into the innovation trap. ...
In the automotive industry, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) face the challenge of being innovative and lean at the same time. This ambidexterity influences their research and development strategy as well as their production system strategy. Considering that until today no consistent definition exists of innovation within the literature, a multidimensional approach is used in this work, which focuses on three main objectives to analyse the compatibility of lean and innovation. Within the theoretical background, innovations are characterised based on their origin (generated or adapted innovation), type (process, product or organisational innovation), and intensity (incremental or radical innovation). Embedding this characterisation into the lifecycle theories of industries, technologies, and products displays the resulting complexity and leads to the drawing of connections between state decisions (laws and regulations) and society (megatrends), thereby creating a holistic theoretical framework in which OEMs have to align their production system strategy. The first objective of this work is to create a deeper understanding of the ambidexterity of the patent structure within the automotive industry focusing on OEMs and their production systems. The coevolution of lean und innovation is analysed in a long-term view using a statistical patent analysis. Until today, the question of whether companies should set their priorities in explorative or exploitative inventions to generate innovations has not been clarified explicitly. Therefore, a model combining ambidexterity (exploitation and exploration) with leagility (lean and agile) is defined and tested to obtain an enhanced understanding that the combination of being agile and being lean plays a key role within a lean production system and has a main influence on innovation. The second objective is to propose how a production system can successfully cope with external/adapted (incremental and radical innovation) innovation using lean principles. A model focusing on the target orientation of new concepts, methods, and technologies is defined and tested to obtain an enhanced understanding that lean must be integrated into the selection and evaluation process of innovations projects within the production system to ensure target orientation and make it possible to cope with innovation successfully. The third objective is to demonstrate how lean principles can be successfully integrated into innovation projects using augmented reality (AR) in assembly training. Modern workplaces equipped with large screens provide new employees with 2D and 3D information about the current task. Workers receive additional visual or haptic information through pick-to-light systems to prevent picking mistakes or smart tools, such as a screwdriver with torque and rotation angle monitoring. Over the last years, a various range of AR systems have been proposed. This shows that assembly training with head-mounted displays using AR and taking lean principles into consideration are as good as being trained by a trainer, which provides an enhanced understanding that lean principles must be integrated in process and product innovation projects to achieve the optimal output and ensure smooth implementation in the production system.
... One clue to this is the fact that Smith and Zeithaml (1997) have shown the relevance of this very model for the first phase of sweeping internationalization movements launched by some of the "Baby Bell" companies. One can also link these results with Cheng and Van de Ven (1996), who established that the first half of the innovation process they studied was chaotic. ...
To innovate efficiently people in companies and other organizations must take management constraints into account. I analyze several of them: (1) those related to managers and other innovation actors; (2) those related to the organization and innovation processes; (3) those that influence the origin of innovation ideas. We can see that some management constraints slow down or discourage innovation, while others energize innovation.
... Firms need to be prepared to introduce a steady stream of innovations to survive and prosper (Lee and Trimi, 2018;Cheng and Van de Ven, 1996). Research has shown that firms with the capability to (re)combine internal and external resources are more likely to succeed with innovation (Molden and Clausen, 2020;Wang et al., 2013). ...
... When unpacking the innovation process, much research addresses this problem by analyzing it through the lens of steps or phases. Some approach the question by distinguishing organizations according to whether they generate or adopt innovations (Damanpour & Wischnevsky, 2006), while others insist on the non-linearity and cumulative dimension of innovations (Cheng & Van de Ven, 1996;Schroeder et al., 2000) or on the social dimension (Perry-Smith & Mannucci, 2017;White, 1992). Following this literature, we break down the innovation process into four phases. ...
Despite a growing interest for places in management research, it remains unclear how the attendance of multiple places by innovators contributes to the innovation process. We propose a new perspective in which innovators attend distinct places that provide them plural resources, and that it is their combination that supports innovation. Based on this proposition, we study the case of projection mapping in Montreal (Canada) as an illustration for creative and cultural industries. We show that the number and types of places attended evolves in the different stages of the innovation process, and that actors are not homogeneous in their attendance. These evolutions are captured with the concept of preferential circulations we introduce to capture the patterns of attendance of places by innovators. Through this, we offer a new lens to the study and the management of innovation through places.
... In a broad sense, researchers have considered whether various approaches to learning may facilitate innovation -of a high-or low-novelty vintage -when combined in particular ways. These approaches generally fall into one of two distinct categories: 1) experiential learning, wherein insights are gained through first-hand contact with specific processes or activities on the part of an organisation (Cheng and Van de Ven 1996;Thomke 2001); and 2) vicarious learning, wherein an organisation observes external initiatives and employs inferential thinking to discern lessons relevant to its own circumstances (Srinivasan, Haunschild, and Grewal 2007). Empirical evidence indicates the possibility of substitution effects between performance feedback (a form of experiential learning) at the firm level and vicarious learning at the population level (Schwab 2007). ...
... In the effort to find solutions to the encountered problems (Mcgrath, 2001), the management control system is beneficial as it enhances efficiency, provides guidelines for evaluation implementation, and improves the performance of the department assigned to find these solutions (Cheng et al., 1996) Management control systems offer a wealth of valuable information. This information can be utilized to evaluate performance, provide ongoing motivation, and facilitate managerial decision-making needs. ...
Performance improvement is the primary goal of public sector organizations. Public sector organizations face two conditions: providing services to the public and enhancing performance as evidence of responsibility for the use of state finances. The alignment of various internal and external factors in an organization is one of the determinants of organizational performance. Each organization must be able to adapt to various contingency factors, namely organizational size, strategy, and environment. This study examines the impact of management control systems, innovation, and organizational commitment on organizational performance at the The Religious Court of Sleman. Data were collected from the The Religious Court of Sleman through purposive sampling involving officials and employees as respondents, answering questionnaires with a five-point Likert scale. Data were processed using the SMARTPLS 3 tool to test hypotheses. The study found that two variables, organizational commitment, and management control systems, significantly influence organizational performance, while the innovation variable does not significantly affect organizational performance. Previous research has focused more on management control systems and innovation as independent variables, and few studies include organizational commitment along with these two variables in measuring organizational performance
... According to exploration, businesses can be divided into those that engage in risk-taking, innovation, experimentation, search, and discovery (Cheng and Van de Ven, 1996). According to March (1991), adaptive systems that prioritize exploration over exploitation are likely to discover that they incur costs while only reaping a small portion of the rewards. ...
Several businesses have established successful strategies in order to move their operations toward the desired future position. However, problems with performance have made it difficult to achieve the suggested future position. The possibility to grow and expand has been found in some supermarkets that embrace organizational ambidexterity. Existing research suggests that supermarkets poor performance can be attributed to informal retail competition, a lack of resource exploitation and exploration, ongoing employee training and development, and consumer preference for convenience because most informal retail locations are more easily accessible. Dynamic capabilities are a firm's ability to adapt and respond to changing environments effectively. They involve processes, routines, and skills that enable an organization to identify, assess, and seize opportunities or respond to threats. Examples of dynamic capabilities in the supermarket industry might include the ability to quickly adjust product offerings in response to changing customer preferences or rapidly reconfigure supply chain operations in response to disruptions. Dynamic capabilities can mediate the relationship between organizational ambidexterity and supermarket performance by enhancing exploration and exploitation. Organizational ambidexterity involves both exploration and exploitation activities. Dynamic capabilities play a crucial role in facilitating these activities. Supermarkets operate in a dynamic and competitive environment. Dynamic capabilities help them adapt to changing market conditions. For example, if a supermarket identifies a shift in customer preferences towards organic products, dynamic capabilities can help in quickly sourcing and stocking these products, thereby improving performance.
... Among research in the field of OA, studies by March (1991), Benner and Tushman (2003), He and Wong (2004), Lubatkin et al. (2006), Menguc and Auh (2008), Raisch and Birkinshaw (2008), O'Reilly and Tushman (2013Tushman ( ), G€ unsel et al. (2018, Clauss et al. (2021), and Wenke et al. (2021) adopted the approach based on exploitation and exploration capabilities while studies by Gibson andBirkinshaw (2004), De Clercq et al. (2013), and Kortmann et al. (2014) adopted the approach based on the distinction between alignment and adaptability (Bakan & Sezer, 2017;Kumkale, 2022). Although studies investigate OA with different dimensions, exploitation and exploration capabilities are the most widely used (Cheng & Van de Ven, 1996). OA was also examined under the dimensions of exploitation and exploration capabilities within the scope of this study. ...
The strategic management literature reveals that organizational ambidexterity (OA) and technological innovation capabilities (TIC) have separate effects on competitive advantage (CA) and firm performance (FP). However, these two capabilities have not been investigated simultaneously and in comparison with the sector. The main aim of this study is to reveal the mediating role of CA in the effect of OA and technological innovation capabilities on FP. Using the research model based on quantitative data, the primary data were collected by applying an online survey to 770 people selected by the random sampling method from the textile/ready-made garment/leather sector representing the manufacturing sector and the information technology sector representing the service sector working under the Istanbul Chamber of Commerce (ICOC) in Istanbul. The data collected were analyzed using SPSS. The results showed that CA mediated positive and statistically significant effects of OA and technological innovation capabilities on FP, and this mediating effect differed by sectors. The current study provided insights into manufacturing and service sector firms. Based on these results, recommendations for researchers and firm managers are presented in the conclusion section.
... From a technological evolution view, Randle and Pisano (2021) use longitudinal firm-level data to support the argument that local search is more important than the distant search for firms' breakthrough innovation at their maturity stage. Specifically, it may continuously increase a firm's knowledge accumulation in its advantageous technological fields (March, 1991;Cheng and Van de Ven, 1996;Stuart and Podolny, 1996). The knowledge accumulation brought by the local search could foster firms' capabilities for developing technologies with novelty and industrial impact, thus, improving firms' performance of breakthrough innovations. ...
The significance of breakthrough innovations is not only reflected in their technological novelty but also in their impacts on the evolution of industrial technology paths. In the context of accelerating digitalization and industrial upgrading, it is particularly important to investigate how can firms manage their technological search strategies to generate breakthrough outputs. We develop a main-path-based approach to complement the existing method of breakthrough innovations in terms of their impact on industrial technology evolution. Besides, based on a sample of 29,620 USPTO patents of the electric communication industry, for the period 1976-2021, we further link firms’ technological search strategies of local and distant modes to their breakthrough innovation and find that the two search modes have respective and joint effects on firms’ breakthrough performance concerning both technological novelty and industrial impact. This paper not only provides a more integrated approach to identifying breakthrough innovations but also explores the impact of a firm’s technological search strategy on them.
... Across different research contexts, exploration has been has been variously associated with search, discovery, experimentation, risk taking, flexibility, new routines, divergent thinking, decentralization, variance increase, innovation, loose cultures, new knowledge and new technology uses (Benner &Tushman 2003;Cheng & Van de Ven, 1996;Rivkin & Siggelkow, 2003). In the same vein, He & Wong (2004) stated that organic structures loosely coupled systems, path breaking, improvisation, competence-building, autonomy, chaos, emerging markets, and technologies have also been associated with exploration Moreover, Stokes et al., (2015) asserted that exploration focuses on meeting the requirements of new customers and markets. ...
... In this instance, radical innovations are designed to meet the needs of new markets and require new knowledge or a departure from existing knowledge within a company. Such innovations are incremental and designed to meet the needs of existing customers or markets and are characterized by refinement, implementation, and efficiency [Cheng andvan de Ven 1996, Grawe 2009]. ...
Background: Crowd logistics is a relatively new phenomenon that has emerged due to the growing demand for flexible, efficient, and sustainable delivery solutions. This paper presents an empirical study of crowd logistics initiatives by collecting a comprehensive dataset of companies operating in this field. Our research aims to identify the elements of the most successful crowd logistics business models and identifies the causes for their failures. Materials and methods: To achieve these goals, we conduct a systematic screening of the world market, which allows us to identify a diverse set of crowd logistics initiatives, ranging from small startups to well-established companies. We then classify these initiatives based on their business models, main business areas, and services. We also review the EU-funded projects related to the development of crowd logistics. Finally, we analyze the main business areas of each initiative, such as urban logistics, last-mile delivery, and transportation of goods. Results: We present the full view of crowd logistics solutions worldwide, their main characteristics, and models to build a complete picture of those solutions and assess them as being successful or unsuccessful by providing the list of the features identified as success factors and failure factors. Conclusions: Finally, we conclude that crowd logistics, despite many failures observed worldwide, can be a successful solution for urban logistics if it meets the requirements mentioned in the results section. Our findings provide insights into the emerging landscape of crowd logistics and offer practical implications for managers, policymakers, and researchers.
... Thus, within this framework, creativity is a necessary but not sufficient component of innovation, and innovation includes the extension of those creative ideas beyond their initial stage (Amabile et al., 1996). The progression of these stages is not precisely linear; rather, innovation occurs in a dynamic, non-linear form (Bledow et al., 2009;West, 2002), making differentiation between phases problematic (Cheng & Van de Ven, 1996). ...
... Því flóknari og margbrotnari sem afurðin er, og því róttaekari sem nýjungin er, þeim mun lengri tíma tekur þetta ferli. Hugmyndir sem byggja á miklu nýnaemi maeta gjarnan miklum áskorunum vegna þess hversu lítil þekking er til staðar um það sem verið er að vinna að eða reyna að ná fram (Cheng og VandeVen, 1996;Forés og Camisón, 2016). ...
Nýsköpun er almennt talin mikilvæg forsenda framfara fyrirtækja og samfélagsins. Það er ekki einungis brýnt að þróa nýjar og endurbættar vörur og þjónustu samkeppninnar vegna, heldur einnig til að uppfylla kröfur vegna loftslagsbreytinga, stuðla að sjálfbærni og mæta sívaxandi kröfum í heilbrigðisþjónustu, svo eitthvað sé nefnt. Til að stuðla að auknum árangri í nýsköpunarverkefnum hafa stefnumarkandi aðilar lagt áherslu á samstarf yfir landamæri meðal þeirra sem hljóta styrki til rannsóknar og þróunarverkefna. Markmið þessarar rannsóknar er að kanna hver áhrif þessara nýju áherslna eru á samstarf yfir landamæri, framgang verkefnanna og vistkerfi nýsköpunar. Beitt var eigindlegri aðferðarfræði þar sem rætt var við tólf þátttakendur sem tóku þátt í nýsköpunarverkefnum sem hlutu styrki úr Tækniþróunarsjóði Íslands, þar af sex sem hlutu styrki innan Eurostars áætlunarinnar sem gerir kröfu um samstarf yfir landamæri og sex sem hlutu það sem við köllum staðbundna styrki. Niðurstöðurnar benda til þess að verkefnin sem byggja á samstarfi yfir landamæri njóti ávinnings af þeim fjölbreyttari þekkingargrunni sem þau hafa aðgang að. Styrkþegar Eurostars styrkjanna þróuðu tengslanet sitt á breiðari grundvelli og með áhrifaríkari hætti en þegar verkefnin byggðu einungis á staðbundnum styrkjum; þeir náðu að efla nýsköpunarfærni sína sem gæti stuðlað að viðvarandi nýsköpun og loks nutu þátttakendur í vistkerfi nýsköpunar víða að jafnframt ávinnings af þekkingu þeirra með þeim hætti að leitt gæti til framfara út fyrir landsteinana. Takmörkun þessarar rannsóknar eru aðallega tvenns konar, annars vegar sú að einungis er byggt á viðtölum við 12 einstaklinga, alla frá sama landi og menningu, hins vegar að viðmælendur í hópnum sem tengdust Eurostars verkefnum kunna að búa almennt yfir meiri reynslu og þekkingu á styrkjakerfinu og eru því hugsanlega færari í að nýta sér þekkingu samstarfsaðila. Rannsóknin veitir þannig fyrst og fremst innsýn í viðfangsefnið og ekki hægt að alhæfa út frá niðurstöðunum.
... In general, exploitation implies firm behaviour characterised by refinement, implementation and efficiency, which are associated with mechanistic structures, tightly coupled systems, path dependence and routinisation. In contrast, exploration implies firm behaviours characterised by search, discovery, experimentation, risk-taking and innovation, which are related to organic structures, loosely coupled systems, path breaking and improvisation (Ancona et al., 2001;Cheng and Van de Ven, 1996;Lewin et al., 1999;March, 1991). Arguably, organisations that only focus on adapting to existing demands might foster structural inertia and suffer from the competency trap, whereas organisations that only emphasise experimenting with new alternatives reduce the speed of improvement and even disrupt successful routines that, in turn, suffer from the failure trap (Hannan and Freeman, 1984;March, 1991). ...
Purpose
This study aims to extend ambidexterity theory from the perspective of organisational learning and examine how process ambidexterity, which comprises operational flexibility and operational routine, responds to environmental uncertainty and ultimately reduces organisational risks.
Design/methodology/approach
This study tests the hypotheses by analysing 464 annual reports of 115 listed companies in the Chinese agricultural and food industry using content and secondary data analyses. Four case studies are also provided.
Findings
The results show that (1) environmental uncertainty has a positive effect on either operational flexibility or operational routine; (2) both operational flexibility and operational routine have negative effects on organisational risks, supporting the view that process ambidexterity mediates the relationship between environmental uncertainty and organisational risks; and (3) organisational slack plays the role of “double-edged sword” by negatively moderating the effect of environmental uncertainty on operational flexibility and positively moderating the effect of environmental uncertainty on operational routine.
Originality/value
In an uncertain environment, companies are exposed to greater risk. This study contributes to risk management in three ways: first, it extends ambidexterity theory to process management and proposes how process ambidexterity balances operational flexibility and routines. Second, it distinguishes between the different conditions under which flexibility or routines are superior. Third, it explains the mechanisms related to how organisations can resolve environmental uncertainty into risk through process ambidexterity.
... Further research on the basis of five change motor model can help to work out mathematical models which will be applied to study dynamic systems (Cheng & Van de Ven, 1996;McGarvey & Hannon, 2004;Basu & Miroshnik, 2015). Therefore, in the further research on change motor interaction it is reasonable to use a Lotka Volterra system for n species (Takeuchi, 1996;Jørgensen & Svirezhev, 2004) since it allows taking into account various types of relationship between them. ...
Purpose/Goal : The article focuses on organization development process based on functioning of change motors; therefore, the author focuses on accomplishing three objectives. The first objective involves adding to the four change motors described by A. H. Van de Ven & M. S. Poole the fifth one, actually the balancing development motor. The second objective deals with devising a five change motor model based on motor interaction during the life cycle of an organization. The model represents the stages of change motor functioning, description of their interaction and combination of different stages of this functioning. The third objective implies developing and describing the method of the analysis of change motor interaction.
Method : Lewin’s field theory, punctuated equilibrium theory, and complexity theory common aspects were identified using the method of comparative analysis and the method of synthesis, which allowed describing balancing development as a change motor.
Results : The five change motor model was developed using the method of metaphors and the method of conceptual modeling.
Conclusion : The results presented in the article can provide more thorough understanding of the development process of an organization since they contribute to the explanation of how an organization declines in its life cycle due to the functioning of its change motors and how this decline can be overcome by implementing a transformational change. The use of the five change motor model presented in this article will provide insight into the development process of an organization as well as contribute to its further theoretical and empirical research.
... In our view, the idea of condensing time-space opportunities and designing assortment requirements to increase resource interaction opportunities borrows from Alderson's description of markets as behaviour systems in which interactions are at the core (Alderson, 1957). This soft-power approach of aligning buyer assortments and supplier assignments expands the management role of network governance advanced by Håkansson and Ford (2002) and aligns with the tension between control and emergence in distributed innovation contexts (see, e.g., Cheng & Van de Ven, 1996;Choi et al., 2001). In addition to providing time and space opportunities, soft power also included assessing social and technical resources and mobilising Unilever's resources. ...
A core challenge of network innovation is the issue of how to govern resource interactions in networks. In this paper, we suggest that Alderson’s (1957) model of organised behaviour systems is a valuable way of understanding the governance of resource interactions in selected sets of interacting suppliers. We explore a longitudinal case involving Unilever and parts of its supplier network and apply the extended case method to understand and explore network innovation governance. Alderson’s framework is used to analyse the assignment and assortment processes for governing network innovation through centralised space and time interactions.
... Exploration is the process of experimental learning and trial-and-error learning under uncertain or ambiguous conditions (March and Olsen 1975;Cheng and Ven 1996). In the process of exploration, individuals' actions and outputs often go through a chaotic phase. ...
Recent research has focused on creative stars who create disproportionate new insights. Despite this attention, organizations have to deal with the puzzle of how to distribute the limited number of creative stars to strike a balance between exploration and exploitation. This study presents a multi-agent simulation model and compares the performance of organizations with varying distributions of creative stars. We find that if the organization consists of subgroups that are minimally connected, moderately to highly concentrated creative stars can reap the benefits of joint exploration. As the confusion increases, the centralized distribution of creative stars becomes more advantageous. When facing particularly high confusion, organizations with moderate dispersion of creative stars benefit more from cross-group links. High centralization levels will eventually be overshadowed by the increased difficulty of leveraging knowledge. In the face of a low degree of knowledge localization and high confusion in exploration, the impact of degree of concentrated distribution of stars on learning performance takes an inverted-U shape when stars act the linking-pin role.
... Firms demonstrating exploratory innovation usually actively seek for radical changes, collect fresh resources and expand aggressively to generate innovations that significantly transfer existing products and services. Such firms are commonly engaged in seeking for new opportunities, including search, discovery, experimentation, risk-taking decisions, and proactive activities (March, 1991;Cheng and Van de Ven, 1996). Correspondingly, exploratory innovations require not only new resources and knowledge or departure from existing resources and knowledge, but also new methods to integrate and utilize these knowledge to offer new designs, develop new distribution channels, and introduce differentiated product or service (Abernathy and Clark, 1985;Vǎtǎmǎnescu et al., 2022), and are aimed at satisfying the emerging and dynamic needs of customers or markets, or anticipating new potential market needs. ...
A number of existing researches agree that digitalization would facility firms to launch ambidextrous innovations. Digitalization is not only about technological change, but more importantly, the reshaping of the firms’ knowledge structure and routines to percept and integrate knowledge. Thus, some researchers suggest that whether firms could benefit from digitalization varies across firms and industries, since innovation in different firms and industries relies on differentiated level of cognitive and reasoning of knowledge. However, existing studies mainly focus on exploring the firm-level differences, and leave the industry-level difference underdeveloped. In response, this study integrates knowledge-based view to examine how a firm’s digitalization affects ambidextrous innovation, and further explore the conjoint effect of industrial knowledge bases—the knowledge base of the industry the firm is located in—on the relationship between firm digitalization level and ambidextrous innovation. This study uses Python to conduct text mining of firms’ annual reports, and obtains data of 394 listed companies from the year 2014 to 2020. The empirical results show that digitalization level has positive effect on both exploratory innovation and exploitative innovation, and the effect on exploitative innovation is stronger than on exploratory innovation. Moreover, the moderating effect of industrial knowledge base is significant on “digitalization–exploratory innovation” but not on “digitalization–exploitative innovation” relationship. By doing so, this study refines the research on the relationship between digitalization and firm innovation, and confirms that the usage of digitalization may lead to achieve an ambidextrous situation. This study also provides a theoretical basis for industrial differences of the effectiveness of digitalization, suggesting firms considering industrial characteristics to implement digitalization-assisted innovation practices.
... A consensus across the literature is that to be an innovation would mean for it to be 'patientcentric' and to bring in 'something new or significantly different from other solutions in the field'. [65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72] Many studies in our review loosely referred to the need and/or use of innovations, and were limited by an inadequate description of 'innovation'. On the other end, elaborate accounts brought clarity regarding the need, design (eg, using service design methods) and implementation of novel solutions. ...
Objective To identify and summarise the digital health interventions (DHIs) implemented for non-communicable disease (NCD) management for COVID-19.
Design Rapid scoping review. Three reviewers jointly screened titles–abstracts and full texts. One reviewer screened all excluded records. Data were mapped to WHO DHI Classification and narratively summarised.
Data sources PubMed, CENTRAL, CINAHL, EMBASE.
Eligibility criteria for selecting studies Peer-reviewed primary research published between 1 November 2019 and 19 September 2021 on DHI for NCD management during the COVID-19 pandemic. Reviews, editorials, letters, commentaries, opinions, conference abstracts and grey literature were excluded.
Results Eighty-three studies drawn from 5275 records were included. A majority of the studies were quantitative in design. Forty per cent of the DHIs were implemented in the Americas. Nearly half of these DHIs targeted mental health conditions. A majority of the interventions were delivered remotely and via telephones. Zoom (26.5%), email (17%) and WhatsApp (7.5%) were the top three platforms for care delivery. Telemedicine, targeted client interventions, personal health tracking and on-demand information services for clients were the most frequently implemented interventions. Details regarding associated costs, sustainability, scalability and data governance of the DHI implementations were not described in the majority of the studies.
Conclusion While DHIs supported NCD management during the COVID-19 pandemic, their implementation has not been equitable across geographies or NCDs. While offering promise towards supporting the continuum of care during care delivery disruptions, DHIs need to be embedded into healthcare delivery settings towards strengthening health systems rather than standalone parallel efforts to overcome system level challenges.
... As bootlegging activities are decoupled from the formal innovation process, they are more likely to lack alignment with the organizational program activities and to explore new directions (Criscuolo et al., 2014;Kanter, 2000). The initiation of bootleg projects allows the elaboration of ideas within the organization while minimizing the risk of premature rejection due to their fuzziness, innovativeness, lack of strategic fit, or because feasibility cannot be initially demonstrated (Augsdorfer, 2005(Augsdorfer, , 2008Cheng & Van de Ven, 1996;Koch & Leitner, 2008;Masoudnia & Szwejczewski, 2012). As such innovation activities are not part of the formal innovation process, ideas developed through bootlegging also get less feedback from the organization. ...
Literature on strategy, innovation, and portfolio management has recently shown increased interest in the concept of planned emergence. This builds on an understanding that organizations’ innovation is triggered both by deliberate top‐down management approaches as well as emergent bottom‐up processes. However, little is known on how to effectively plan emergence. In this context, bootlegging has been mentioned as a potential approach, describing instances in which employees choose to innovate without the knowledge and permission of top managers. Whereas past research has focused on the individual employee, we shift the perspective to the overall tendency of bootlegging in organizations. We investigate which organizational conditions facilitate the propensity of bootlegging becoming a widespread practice in an organization, and how this tendency is associated with the organization’s innovativeness. Drawing on the theory of creative deviance, we argue that organizations deploying management practices fostering emergent and induced innovation initiatives increase structural strain and thereby bootlegging tendency in such organizations. As more innovation initiatives are elaborated outside the formal process, the number and diversity of ideas outside the strategic scope should increase. Higher bootlegging tendency is thereby proposed to be associated with higher portfolio innovativeness. Empirical evidence from the study of 930 respondents in 124 firms supports the notion that management practices supporting emergent innovation initiatives, increase bootlegging tendency, which in turn increases newness of the organization’s innovation portfolio. Management practices inducing a particular innovation direction are, in contrast, less prone to trigger structural strain with lesser effects on bootlegging tendencies of the organization. In sum, we contribute to the literature by providing evidence on bootlegging as a promising approach to enable ‘planned emergence’. We illustrate how different types of management practices can be used to regulate deviance in the organization to achieve higher degrees of newness of the organization’s innovation outcomes.
... This tension stems from the bipolar nature of exploitation vs. exploration. While exploitation represents organizational behaviors focused on fostering refinement, efficiency, and certainty; exploration represents search, experimentation, and risk taking (Cheng & Van de Ven, 1996;Levinthal & March, 1993;March, 1991). Thus, exploitation and exploration activities require different routines, mindsets, and capabilities within organizations (Andriopoulos & Lewis, 2009;O'Reilly & Tushman, 2008). ...
Prior studies demonstrate that firms need to make smart trade-off decisions between exploration and exploitation activities in order to increase performance. Chief executive officers (CEOs) are principal decision makers of a firm's strategic posture. In this study, we theorize and empirically examine how relative exploration orientation of large publicly listed firms varies based on the career variety of their CEOs-that is, how diverse the professional experiences of executives were prior to them becoming CEOs. We further argue that the heterogeneity and structure of the top management team moderates the impact of CEO career variety on firms' relative exploration orientation. Based on multisource secondary data for 318 S&P 500 firms from 2005 to 2015, we find that CEO career variety is positively associated with relative exploration orientation. Interestingly, CEOs with high career varieties appear to be less effective in pursuing exploration, when they work with highly heterogeneous and structurally interdependent top management teams.
L’entrepreneuriat est un domaine complexe. L’autopraxéographie est une méthode à la première personne qui peut permettre d’explorer des éléments de cette complexité. Cet article vise à expliquer les spécificités de cette méthode et à en montrer des exemples d’utilisation pour participer à la compréhension de l’entrepreneuriat. Pour ce faire, il commence par présenter la complexité pour aborder l’entrepreneuriat, par la suite il explique l’autopraxéographie. Ce faisant, il expose un panorama des méthodes à la première personne, le paradigme épistémologique constructiviste pragmatique (PECP), les spécificités, le processus et les limites inhérentes à ce type de méthodes. Enfin, cet article propose de se référer à plusieurs exemples d’articles ou communications ayant utilisé cette méthode en vue d’explorer certains éléments liés à la complexité entrepreneuriale.
En este artículo se aborda el estudio de la innovación como producto resultante de conceptualizar la economía como un sistema caótico determinista, con arreglo a las características de aperiodicidad, predecibilidad y dependencia sensible a las condiciones iniciales. A partir de la serie 1990-2010 del Índice de Desarrollo Humano (IDH) del PNUD se ha modelizado el comportamiento del nivel de desarrollo de las economías de EU-27, en la hipótesis de que tal nivel posee capacidad explicativa sobre su posición innovadora en 2010, representada por el Índice de Innovación de la Unión (Innovation Union Scoreboard-IUS). De forma significativa se ha contrastado la posición innovadora del Reino Unido y Alemania como economías prototipo de modelos estilizados de innovación, como muestra de las posibilidades que ofrecen las leyes del caos determinista para reinterpretar estos fenómenos.
Geopolitical and societal changes are increasingly narrated using the concept of complexity. In a range of policy contexts, from climate to finance and peacekeeping to defence and security, complexity is often prominent. This article explores the contemporary expressions of complexity in defence and security scholarship and policy. To understand the expressions of complexity, we view it as a ‘folk theory’ – what others have called a category of practice. We illustrate how this folk theory has gained prominence in NATO policy regarding the organizing of future war and warfare as one example of a policy context in which expressions of complexity are produced and promoted. Specifically, we examine NATO’s future warfighting concept – multi-domain operations – and explore how the concept offers a way and a new language to make sense of an uncertain future and make it governable from the present. We discuss some consequences of a ‘folk theory’ becoming the explanation rather than one of many explanations of the future defence and security landscape. As a representative of folk theory, complexity offers a strong performative master narrative for a variety of orientations, yet one whose practical relevance for the organization of security can be questioned.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has become an integral part of business and is being used more and more frequently due to its versatile capabilities. The use of AI can be a decisive competitive advantage, especially for customer-centric and innovation-orientated business models. Traditionally, the innovation process has primarily been driven by marketing experts, engineers, and designers. At the same time, however, there is growing interest in the integration of generative AI in the innovation process. More and more companies are integrating conversational language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT as problem-solving agents in their innovation process to effectively meet the growing demands of customers. With the growing interest of companies, research interest in the interface between AI and innovation is also growing. However, the field of research to date is still fragmented and study results are ori-entated as individual case studies in individual fields. To date, there has been a lack of a bundled approach that integrates and systematizes current studies.
This article analyses how AI can be integrated into the phases of the innovation process. A systematic literature review sheds light on its potential and challenges within the innovation process. The results indicate that AI can be used in all phases of the innovation process, taking on the role of a supporter, an extension or an independent actor. Accordingly, AI can contribute to the reorganization of innovation processes in companies in different ways. Both opportunities and challenges for companies become apparent.
THE MEDIATING ROLE OF COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE IN THE EFFECT OF ORGANIZATIONAL AMBIDEXTERITY AND TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION CAPABILITY ON FIRM PERFORMANCE
The strategic management literature separately reveals that organisational ambidexterity and technological innovation capabilities are effective in competitive advantage and firm performance. However, studies have yet to be found in the literature investigating these two capabilities simultaneously and in a sectoral comparison. The current study aimed to reveal the mediating role of competitive advantage in the effect of organisational ambidexterity and technological innovation capabilities on firm performance and how this role varies according to sectors. Based on the resource-based view, this study used an empirical research method based on quantitative data. Primary data were collected by applying an online questionnaire to 777 people selected by random sampling method from the textile/apparel/leather sector representing the industry sector working under the Istanbul Chamber of Commerce (ITO) and the information technology sector representing the service sector in the province of Istanbul. The collected data were analysed using the SPSS program. The results reveal that competitive advantage mediates the positive and statistically significant effects of organisational ambidexterity and technological innovation capabilities on firm performance, and this mediation role differs by industry. The detailed findings of the present study provided insights into industrial and service sector businesses. Based on these findings, suggestions for researchers and business managers are presented in the conclusion section.
This study contributes to the understanding of the speed of the effects of publicly funded research – R&D grants – on firm R&D, innovation and innovation behaviour. We argue that while the speed of the positive effects on R&D (i.e. input additionality; IA) tightly relates to public support programmes’ requirement of private contribution in R&D spending, the positive effects on innovation (i.e. output additionality; OA) and innovation behaviour (i.e. behavioural additionality; BA) are temporally delayed, linked to the explorative nature of learning associated with publicly funded projects and obstacles to changes in the innovation behaviour of firms. We empirically test our theoretical framework for a sample of R&D‐intensive UK firms to find that while IA occurs in the year following receipt of R&D grants, BA takes 3 years after receipt of R&D grants to occur. We do not find that grants have a positive effect on either product or process innovation. In measuring BA, we employ a ‘classical’ treatment and control group evaluation without relying on firms’ perceptions of how the receipt of grants affected their innovation behaviour. Our findings have significant implications for both management practice and policy.
We investigate how entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and national culture influence the formation of a diversified strategic alliance portfolio, encompassing various cooperative agreements based on governance mechanisms and partner diversity. A diverse strategic alliance portfolio structured in this manner may be used by smaller firms to derive benefits from social capital and absorb environmental complexities, increasing firms’ ability to survive environmental dynamism. Empirical models are estimated using data from 529 small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) located in five countries – Indonesia, Finland, Mexico, the Netherlands, and Sweden. Our findings indicate that SMEs with stronger EO are more likely to establish diversified strategic alliance portfolios. However, this effect is moderated by various national cultural factors (i.e., uncertainty avoidance, individualism, and masculinity).
Innovation management research demonstrates that political behavior is necessary for project leaders to conduct breakthrough innovation (BI) projects successfully. Although it is known that project leaders' political behavior contributes to BI project success by maintaining continued support for the projects, this study focuses on another function of organizational politics: the uncertainty‐handling function. Project leaders encounter uncertainties during their BI projects and are tormented by unintended project stagnation. While scholars and practitioners have developed several logic‐based responsive approaches to address uncertainty problems, project leaders also employ political behavior. The realization provokes questions such as, what type of uncertainty in particular triggers a project manager's political behavior in the context of BI development? Is there any specific linkage between a particular type of uncertainty and particular political behavior? What mechanisms underpin those relationships? To answer these questions, we investigate six BI projects in five mature Japanese companies through the lens of the meaning management perspective. The analysis reveals that (1) project leaders use political behavior to address a specific situation in which two uncertainties are intertwined; (2) project leaders use different political behavior depending on the type of intertwined uncertainties; and (3) project leaders resolve intertwined uncertainties with political behavior and then address each uncertainty in their BI projects. This study contributes to the innovation politics literature and innovation management practices by identifying specific conditions under which BI project leaders use political behavior and suggesting the fit between particular political behaviors and uncertainty conditions.
A growing body of literature suggests that unpredictable, resource-depleting shocks – ranging from natural disasters to public health crises and beyond – require the firm to respond adaptively. However, how firms do so remains largely undertheorized. To contribute to this line of literature, the authors borrow from the conservation of resources (COR) theory of stress and the dynamic capabilities perspective to introduce the concept of firm stress – a state of reduced and irregular readiness firms enter into following unpredictable, resource-depleting shocks. Our theoretical model illustrates that firms must punctuate the stress state to adapt by first deploying a retrenchment response, thereby conserving resources and allowing the firm to consider how to best redeploy its dynamic capabilities to adapt. Subsequently, the firm can redeploy its capabilities and adaptively respond in one of three ways: exiting (reconfiguring resources for alternative use), persevering (reconfiguring resources for better use), or innovating (developing new resources). Overall, the authors offer a process model of firm stress and adaptive responses following an unpredictable, resource-depleting shock that paves the way for future research on stress in the strategy literature.
Numerous researchers and practitioners have turned to complexity science to better understand human systems. Simulation can be used to observe how the microlevel actions of many human agents create emergent structures and novel behavior in complex adaptive systems. In such simulations, communication between human agents is often modeled simply as message passing, where a message or text may transfer data, trigger action, or inform context. Human communication involves more than the transmission of texts and messages, however. Such a perspective is likely to limit the effectiveness and insight that we can gain from simulations, and complexity science itself. In this paper, we propose a model of how close analysis of discursive processes between individuals (high-resolution), which occur simultaneously across a human system (broadband), dynamically evolve. We propose six different processes that describe how evolutionary variation can occur in texts—recontextualization, pruning, chunking, merging, appropriation, and mutation. These process models can facilitate the simulation of high-resolution, broadband discourse processes, and can aid in the analysis of data from such processes. Examples are used to illustrate each process. We make the tentative suggestion that discourse may evolve to the “edge of chaos.” We conclude with a discussion concerning how high-resolution, broadband discourse data could actually be collected.
The widely embraced notion of "win-win" in business management, often discussed but not thoroughly understood, is revealed as an ineffective "tit-for-tat" strategy. This strategy thrives in imperfect markets, characterized by information disparities and business secrecy, perpetuating dishonesty and rationalizing its continuation. Imperfections in markets stem from deceptive communication rather than inherent complexity. This chaos, while disruptive, can also be a source of creativity. To harness creative chaos, markets must aspire to greater perfection, recognizing their emergent, holistic nature. The essay explores the need for principles like "Goodness at Heart," "Concern for Others," "Sincerity at Work," and "Rigour in its Execution" to redirect chaotic energy toward genuine success. This genuine success transcends the facade of "win-win," uncovering the reality of concealed losses within the narrative tactics of business.
Strategic innovation dynamically brings about strategic positioning through new products, services and business models, and is a dynamic view of strategy that enables a corporation to maintain its competitive advantage and establish sustainable growth. For these reasons, corporations have to be innovators that can reinforce their existing positions through incremental innovation, while at the same time constantly renewing or destroying existing business through radical innovation. This book presents a holistic theoretical model, The Strategic Innovation System, as a system of capabilities for companies to achieve strategic innovation.
As a subsystem of the Strategic Innovation System, this book presents the concept of the “Capabilities Building Map”, which has characteristics of four different capabilities that correspond to the elements of speed of changes and uncertainty in the environment faced by companies. It explores how companies can change and even evolve their capabilities to achieve strategic innovation, using the latest findings of the systems-view, the process-view, and dynamic capabilities-view. The author evaluates management systems that achieve sustainable strategic innovation by utilizing knowledge assets inside and outside of organizations, including those of leaders, rather than simply relying on leaders with strong will.
This book will primarily appeal to academics, researchers, and graduate students interested in innovation and technology management, digital transformation as well as strategic management and strategy planning and a broader business audience.
Purpose
This study aims to develop the first Theory of Technological Response and Progress in Chaos (TRPC) and examine the case of technological development during the COVID-19 pandemic. The research objectives of this study were to: identify the key technologies that act as a response mechanism during the chaos event, specifically in the case of COVID-19; examine how technologies evolve, develop and diffuse in an immediate crisis and a chaotic environment; theorise various types and periods of technological response and progress during the emergence of chaos and the stages that unfold; and develop policy-oriented recommendations and establish technological foundations to address subsequent chaos events.
Design/methodology/approach
This study used the grounded theory as a methodology with a mixed-method approach that included quantitative and qualitative methods. The authors used the quantitative method to assist with the qualitative step to build the TRPC theory. Accordingly, this study integrated machine learning and text mining approaches to the qualitative data analysis following the steps of the grounded theory approach.
Findings
As a result of the TRPC theory development process, the authors identified three types of technologies (survival, essential and enhancement technologies) and five types of periods (stable, initial, survival-dominant, essential-dominant and enhancement-dominant periods) that are specific to chaos-technology interactions. The policy implications of this study demonstrate that a required technological base and know-how must be established before a chaotic event emerges.
Research limitations/implications
Concerning the limitations of this study, social media data has advantages over other data sources, such as the examination of dynamic areas and analyses of immediate responses to chaos. However, other researchers can examine publications and patent sources to augment the findings concerning scientific approaches and new inventions in relation to COVID-19 and other chaos-specific developments. The authors developed the TRPC theory by studying the COVID-19 pandemic, however, other researchers can utilise it to study other chaos-related conditions, such as chaotic events that are caused by natural disasters. Other scholars can investigate the technological response and progress pattern in other rapidly emerging chaotic events of an uncertain and complex nature to augment these findings.
Practical implications
Following the indications of the OECD (2021a) and considering the study conducted by the European Parliamentary Research Service (Kritikos, 2020), the authors identified the key technologies that are significant for chaos and COVID-19 response using machine learning and text intelligence approach. Accordingly, the authors mapped all technological developments using clustering approaches, and examined the technological progress within the immediate chaos period using social media data.
Social implications
The key policy implication of this study concerns the need for policymakers to develop policies that will help to establish the required technological base and know-how before chaos emerges. As a result, a rapid response can be implemented to mitigate the chaos and transform it into a competitive advantage. The authors also revealed that this recommendation overlaps with the model of dynamic capabilities in the literature (Teece and Pisano, 2003). Furthermore, this study recommends that nations and organisations establish a technological base that specifically includes technologies that bear 3A characteristics. These are the most crucial technologies for the survival- and essential-dominant stages. Moreover, the results of this study demonstrate that chaos accelerates technological progress through the rapid adoption and diffusion of technologies into different fields. Hence, nations and organisations should regard this rapid progress as an opportunity and establish the prior knowledge base and technologies before chaos emerges.
Originality/value
The authors have contributed to the chaos studies and the relationship between chaos and technological development by establishing the first theoretical foundation using the grounded theory approach, hereafter referred to as the TRPC theory. As part of the TRPC theory, the authors present three periods of technological response in the following sequence: survival technology, essential technology and enhancement technology. Moreover, this study illustrates the evolving technological importance and priorities as the periods of technological progress proceed under rapidly developing chaos.
Start‐up and early growth of new ventures is a complex process, filled with challenges and learning amidst continuous dynamic change. Understanding these dynamics is a critical goal for entrepreneurs and has been researched by entrepreneurship scholars using complexity sciences. Building on this literature, we explore the ‘dynamics of emergent change’ by interviewing 20 founders/CEOs of young, high‐potential ventures in the Republic of Ireland to generate theory on how these dynamics are experienced throughout the start‐up journey. Our findings suggest a set of process dynamics that are commonly experienced as instability, tension, non‐linear change, unpredictability and surprise, as well as the outcome dynamics of emergent structures, ongoing creation of new knowledge and enhanced capabilities. These are experienced across every aspect of entrepreneurship, from within the specific innovation, through marketing, operations and finance. These findings contribute towards our understanding of how the entrepreneurs deal with these dynamics. Given the current success of their venture, we take their suggestions as an outline for ‘generative leadership’ – behavioural and strategic tools for enhanced venture growth and development.
In diesem Buch geht es um gelungene und misslungene Innovationen aus deutschen Unternehmen und um die wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnisse und praktischen Lehren, die man daraus ziehen kann. Diese Betrachtung ist in mehrerer Hinsicht einzigartig: In der Innovationsforschung werden entweder einzelne Innovationsfälle ausführlicher recherchiert oder Breitenerhebungen zu ausgewählten Fragen von Innovationen durchgeführt. Hier haben wir die Vorzüge beider Verfahren kombiniert: Wir haben intensive Fallstudien erstellt, gewonnen aus ausführlichen Interviews mit den Hauptbeteiligten, so dass die spezifische Entwicklung jeder einzelnen Innovation erfasst
werden konnte. Dies geschah nicht nur bei Einzelfällen, sondern bei insgesamt 42 Produkt- und Verfahrensinnovationen. Ergänzt wurde es durch eine anschließende Fragebogenerhebung bei den befragten Hauptbeteiligten, so dass wir auch vergleichende Auswertungen machen konnten, um Hypothesen bzw. Erklärungen statistisch
abgesichert zu prüfen. Dabei haben wir gelungene und misslungene Innovationen aus denselben Unternehmen verglichen, so dass die ermittelten Unterschiede direkt die Innovationsprozesse widerspiegeln und nicht etwa Unterschiede zwischen Unternehmen, Branchen oder Marktbedingungen. Aus den recherchierten Innovationsfällen wurden 21 ausgewählt und jeweils als Beispiel für die untersuchten Thesen dargestellt (im Inhaltsverzeichnis kursiv gedruckt). Diese Fallgeschichten sind nicht, wie sonst oft üblich, als Heldentaten oder Schurkenstücke ausgemalt, sondern sie geben einen realistischeren Einblick in die Vielgestaltigkeit und Verschlungenheit typischer Innovationsprozesse als üblich.
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