The Emergence of Continual Strategic Innovation

Robert Chapman Wood
Department of Organization and Management

Kenneth J. Hatten
Department of Management Policy and Strategy Boston University

Peter J. Williamson
Euro-Asia Centre INSEAD

April 2003

Ref #: OM-03-001

Abstract

Despite institutional constraints, some organizations overcome inertia and begin carrying out repeated innovation in core strategies. But organization theory does not offer an adequate account of how this can happen. This paper reports an inductive study that examines how leaders encouraged four organizations to develop a capability for continual strategic innovation. It suggests the emergence of this capability occurred through a process that differed significantly from that described in the dominant theory of managed change, which asserts that leaders should develop a “blueprint” of the future and then “direct” a course of reorientation to bring the organization into alignment with the blueprint. The leaders studied here began with an extremely vague strategic intent rather than a blueprint of the future. Rather than “directing” the reorientation process by stating precisely what the organization should do or saying how it should innovate, they encouraged organization members to improvise initial innovations. Then after some innovations had succeeded, other organization members heard of the successes and attempted to copy the innovation processes the successful innovators had used. As a result, these processes eventually evolved into strategy innovation routines, which senior executives supported with limited formalization. The routines became institutions, apparently idiosyncratic to each firm, that supported continual innovation in core strategies. Based on these findings, we present a formal model of the emergence of continual strategic innovation and we discuss why more improvisational management, rather than standard approaches to organizational change, seems to result in the emergence of this unusual capability.

For the full text of this paper please contact Robert Chapman Wood (wood_rc@cob.sjsu.edu)