Innovation

Innovation

Describe an innovation in your organisation, (any kind of innovation: product, process, organisational procedures, rules), which succeeded or failed; trying to identify:

a) the nature of innovation (performance improvement, combination, analogy, abstraction);

b) the functional space (i.e. what the particular innovation was aimed to deliver to its users, what was it for, in general and abstract terms);

c) the space of possibilities (i.e. all possible solutions to all functions identified in the functional space);

d) the main obstacles and resistance to innovation;

e) the strong and weak ties that were activated by actors within and outside the organisation in order to generate, support and implement the innovation;

f) whether organisational solutions were used in order to sustain both exploration and exploitation (i.e. search, trial and error, acceptance of mistakes vs. commitment, freezing of specifications, efficiency).