Aesthetics of business innovation: experiencing 'internal process' versus 'external jolts'.

SUMMARY

This paper summarizes findings of a research project on business innovation. It contrasts two forms of innovation--those of 'internal process' and 'external jolt'. We propose that their deployment depends on how managers responsible for business innovation in large firms feel about, and sense and make sense of innovation. The felt-sensed form of innovation that they find appealing or with which they are comfortable, makes a big difference on what type of innovation process is actually put in place, and is sometimes manifested in the actual business model. Our ambition is to highlight these so-called 'nonrational' aspects in innovation decision-making that, we propose, complement--and sometimes shape--rational analyses determining managerial efforts to innovate.

KEY WORDS

business aesthetics; internal-process innovation aesthetic; external-jolt innovation aesthetic; organisational fit; managing innovation; 'what feels right'; sustainable business cycle; Shell's Gamechanger; case study; management implications

INTRODUCTION

Business innovation is a field that attracts many people--academics as well as practitioners--and consequently many theories and explanations as to what makes it successful exist. Innovators in innovation research (Christensen, 1997; Van de Ven et al., 1999) are quickly acclaimed. Yet, no single perspective or ultimate answer, nor a single well-accepted contingency model has been decided upon, and differences continue to exist (Autier, 1999). Our ambition is to shed new light to the understanding of such differences by introducing a new perspective on business innovation--aesthetics.

Our paper reports the findings of a cosponsored research project to investigate the nature of business innovation, i.e. the creation of new sustainable business models. Building on earlier work on aesthetics, we found that the sense managers make, in the sense-making (Weick, 1995; Weick, 2000), and in the sensing-feeling and forming-a-view meanings (Ramirez, 1987; Strati, 1999; Damasio, 2000; Schlag, 2002) of innovation contributes to determining which innovation approach they enact. Their preferred sense of what innovation is, and how appealing they find one mode of innovation to be, will be manifested in terms of the way they connect people and technology (Latour, 1998) to enact their chosen mode of innovation.

WHAT DO WE MEAN BY AESTHETICS?

Aesthetics is a helpful way to understand how people feel they have experienced different approaches to something. Aesthetics assesses how some feelings shape what is sensed, experienced, apprehended, perceived, and conceived of. The understanding aesthetics affords is not confined to art, and has over recent years been applied to organizations (Ramirez, 1987; Strati, 1999), to decision-making at NASA (Feldman, 2000) and to understand how judges interpret American law (Schlag, 2002). Here we extend the use to appreciate how managers determine which form of innovation they feel most in tune with. This then affects, and is affected by, which form of innovation they implement.

Aesthetics is: 'an experience that cognitively and/or perceptually enables us to symbolize "felt life"' (Langer, 1953/1979). A central idea in aesthetics is that for a given mind whatever objective reality may exist, can only be in practice accessed by that mind. The mind cannot know the reality without it itself engaging the outside world and interpreting it. Thus, the way in which we interpret 'reality' depends on how our mind connects with the data and information our minds experience (Ramirez, 1991). To quote Bateson (1972): 'by aesthetic, I mean responsiveness to the pattern that connects'. Connection between mind and reality where we feel responsiveness (by us or by reality) constitutes experiences we term aesthetic ones. The response to the pattern depends upon how minds connect what they consider vital to what they experience. For managers:

Aesthetics in organizational life, therefore, concerns a form of human knowledge; and specifically the knowledge yielded by the perceptive faculties of hearing, sight, touch, smell and taste, and by the capacity for aesthetic judgment (Strati, 1999: 2)

This means that to study the aesthetics of business innovation we describe how managers respond to the pattern that connects a given mode of experienced innovation efforts to their feeling of what is vital (i.e., in life). To illustrate what we mean, we quote Schlag's comparable analysis of how aesthetic experience operates in the realm of law in the USA:

Law is an aesthetic enterprise. Before the ethical dreams and political ambitions ... can even be articulated ... aesthetics have already shaped the medium within which those projects ... work. (2002: 1049)

What I am after is the description of those recurrent forms that shape the creation, apprehension, and identity of law. What is at stake is to reveal the aesthetics within which American law is cast. (2002: 1051)

This is precisely what this paper attempts to do--not for American law, but for innovation. We will describe two different approaches of business innovation in terms of their aesthetics. We acknowledge the possibility that other aesthetic forms of innovation may exist. The two forms we centre on were found in the research we carried out, and became apparent to us when the research was completed. One approach we identified we call the 'internal-process' aesthetic, the other the 'external-jolt' one. Our article provides an alternative explanation as to how, and to some extent why, particular firms and managers select a specific way of organizing their innovation efforts.

Our approach does not mean we ignore more standard explanations for how managers and firms organize their innovation activities. The internal-process approach is often rationalized as being effective (see e.g., Normann, 2000; Hedlund, 1986). Likewise, the external-jolt approach also is argued to be effective (see e.g., Van der Heijden, 1996). Our article wishes to contribute to a richer picture of ways to organize innovation by adding the aesthetics of innovation, e.g. in terms of managers' pathos and ethos (Strati, 1999), to the more traditional and rational arguments distinguishing, characterizing and evaluating each of the two approaches. While contingency theorists (Woodward, 1965; Thompson, 1967; Lawrence and Lorsch, 1967) attribute the differences among innovation types on so-called 'external' or 'objective' conditions such as complexity or type of technology, our findings suggest that individual sensitivities may be as important in determining the type of innovation that is enacted.

Our ambition is to outline inherent characteristics of two different archetypes or 'ideal types' in the Weberian mode of 'aesthetic managers' (Dobson, 1999: 126) by outlining how different managers sense good innovation management. Organizational culture and professional identity as well as personal taste are factors that contribute to our capacity to feel things and possibilities. Feelings we are comfortable with shape our preferences. Cognitive psychology and neurology are making great contributions to increase the understanding of how this works (Damasio, 2000). In this paper we aim to survey the results of these differences in the field of business innovation.

METHODOLOGY

The innovation research project that makes the empirical foundation of this article used several complementary methodological techniques. The project was launched in 1999 and finalized in 2000. Its aim was to explore the nature of business innovation by combining theoretical findings and conclusions with managerial experience. To achieve this, the project group included academics as well as managers with the aim of integrating the knowledge and experience from these two fields of expertise. There were two parallel and mutually rewarding objectives. One was directly focused on normative advice for managers and firms. The other one was aimed to deepen the conceptual understanding of business innovation. Both approaches underlie this article.

The research group initiated the project by defining the main issues and questions that were to be studied. A set of introductory interviews with managers were made with the ambition to develop a preliminary understanding of how practitioners viewed business innovation. In parallel, a literature review was undertaken to understand how research academics view these issues. The objective was to use a grounded theory approach (Glaser and Strauss, 1968) to build an initial understanding via constructive dialogue between theory and practice, and thus develop better insights as to how business innovation forms are characterized and chosen. Our grounded theory approach meant that we continuously and simultaneously sought theoretical models and empirical examples that informed each other. Our data was mostly qualitative. The combination of theory and practice helped us produce our findings. In essence, our methodological approach depended on our own ability to be empathetic, imaginative, and able to put ourselves in the managers' 'shoes' (Strati, 1999: 54).