Book Description

After phenomenology and feminism the concept of care is taken forward to conceive innovation as an interactive process requiring diversity and collectivity. A fresh look at innovation is grounded in the long standing experience of the Roskilde group and it takes the readers into an intriguing voyage in practical creativity. Silvia Gherardi, Dipartimento di Sociologia e Ricerca Sociale, Italy It is not an easy task to be innovative in the large and increasing field of innovation studies. We should therefore thank and welcome the Roskilde School for achieving such a difficult task. This book provides a new and promising vision of innovation which is metaphorically called innovation with care . This new theory draws upon a sociological perspective in order to open up the black box of the organization. It brings interacting people and social process to the forefront of innovation phenomena. Innovation and the Creative Process explores innovation with care, illustrating that it is possible to integrate in the innovation theory a wide range of specialized and non-specialized actors, activities and forms of business and social innovations. Following the Schumpeterian tradition, it provides a more comprehensive notion of innovation and enlarges the scope of innovation theory. This book represents a fruitful approach to innovation which academics, private and public practitioners should consider with much care. Faïz Gallouj, University of Lille, France This book explores new frameworks and methods of understanding and analysing innovation. These are set against a backdrop of innovation with care , which is seen as a phenomenon that takes place among many actors with different perspectives, ideas and cultures that must be carefully woven together in order to achieve the benefits of innovation The new perspectives presented by the contributors will be important in encouraging successful innovation across sectors, organizations and people. They examine how people and organizations deal with the tensions and paradoxes in the innovative process between creativity and innovation, variation and selection, and sense and strategy-making. The book also includes a sociological approach to innovation as a complement to economic perspectives in order to better understand how people can benefit from innovation in a number of interesting private and public cases. To benefit from innovation, it concludes, people depend less on formal roles and formal organization than on a caring approach that enables them to deal with and interpret evolutions across people, organizations and sectors. This highly original, innovative book will provide fascinating reading for a diverse audience, including academics, researchers, policymakers and managers with an interest in innovation, organization studies, institutional theory and, more generally, business and management.