Februrary 2008
Seminar
Addressing the Challenge of Novelty in Distributed Innovation:
February 29, 12:00 - 1:30 PM
Social Ecology I, Room 306
Paul Carlile
Professor of Management and Information Systems
School of Management
Boston University
Biography
Paul R. Carlile is an Associate Professor of Management and Information Systems at Boston University’s School of Management. A primary focus in Paul’s work has been understanding the challenge and solutions to moving knowledge around specialized domain. His work has been published in Administrative Science Quarterly, Harvard Business Review, Management Science, Organization Science and several other journals. Paul received his Ph.D. in Organization Studies at the University of Michigan; his MA in Organizational Behavior and B.A in Anthropology and Philosophy both at Brigham Young University.
Abstract
Innovation requires a tension between what has worked in the past (old knowledge) and what may work in the future (new knowledge). Individuals then confront the challenge of novelty as they pursue an innovative course of action. This individual tension also confronts a social one as individuals must share and assess their knowledge with others to pursue an innovative course of action collectively.
To explain how the challenge of novelty is addressed we present three cases of distributed innovation: an open source software community, a Toyota production setting and the development of a new car at Toyota. These cases extend from relatively simple to increasingly complex circumstances and so help us establish a rich empirical landscape for conceptual development.
We start by focusing on the infrastructure—the relations among actors and the artifacts they use—across these different settings. What we then find is that the performance of an “infrastructure for innovation” is in the ability of actors to use artifacts to create confirmation about what innovative course of action to take, both individually and collectively. So this performance of an infrastructure addresses the challenge of novelty and the individual and social tensions involved. This empirical and conceptual explanation of an infrastructure for innovation provides a new yet practical approach for generating and managing innovation in a variety of settings.