Managing innovation through cognitive mapping
Date
2005Author
Abstract
Innovation is an important element of strategic management (2003), and most
product innovations involve cross-functional teams (Cooper and Kleinschmidt,
1994) who have some difficulty in developing a shared understanding of a
particular innovation problem, which can often be characterised as a complex
ill-structured problem (described as a task). This study uses an action
research approach (Eden and Huxham, 1996) to explore how to develop a
shared vocabulary and understanding of a task and then how to direct its
growth and development.
From a review of relevant literature, five dominant influencing factors emerged
that impact on a team's capability to manage the task. These dominant
influencing factors are the teams: shared cognition, creative processes, task
relevant knowledge development, team role development and task tracking.
These were used as the building blocks in an architectural innovation. The
researchers experience in innovation projects in industry and with MBA
students on smaller project re-enforced this literature review.
An iterative action research process involving 160 interviews was then used to
develop a new framework that positively impacted on these five dominant
influencing factors in seven organisations. The seven companies selected
were all at the early stage of exploring an ill-structured innovative opportunity,
which formed the basis of the tasks for the various teams. These varied in
their nature but all required architectural knowledge development in cross
functional teams ranging from four to seven people. The framework uses as
its building blocks existing established models and approaches from different
disciplines
Description
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