MIT Sloan Management Review

 

About the Research

We began our inquiry into the effects of boundaries on innovation from a practitioner perspective by reflecting on the cases of companies we knew. Liisa Välikangas has addressed innovation in various companies and contexts, including Shell, Nokia, Air Products, IDEO, Sun Microsystems and others. Michael Gibbert has written about innovation, organizational capabilities and the management of knowledge assets in such companies as BASF, Deutsche Bank, Siemens, Novartis and Unisys.i We also considered what other authors in strategic management and the management of innovation have discovered about boundaries and/or innovation. We found that few authors addressed the two issues in conjunction; even fewer studies integrated ideas about the effects of boundaries on innovation, and none that we are aware of considered the dual nature of boundaries — either enabling or constraining.ii Thus we sought to explore the notion of boundaries in innovation together with the specific ways in which the company managed innovation by setting constraints and creating enablers.

Methodologically, we were inspired by Glaser and Strauss’ “grounded theorizing,”iii and wished to engage executives in a dialogue. From these dialogues emerged the notion of innovation traps, which found support in our review of the literature, as well as the idea of setting boundaries to manage innovation and escape those traps. The companies we studied are large, established firms, and they... To read the complete article, login or sign-up using the form below.