Much recent discussion has highlighted the challenges posed by what have variouslybeen called “disruptive”, “discontinuous”, “breakthrough” and “radical” innovations.Although the labelling may vary, the underlying themes appear to be consistent. Inparticular it is clear that under conditions in which the dominant “rules of the game”change as a result of emergent or shifting markets, major movements at thetechnological frontier, dislocations in the regulatory environment etc, evenorganizations with well-developed innovation capabilities get into difficulties. This isless a matter of particular technological, market or political stimuli than of thelimitations of the repertoire of organizational responses available to the firm. Thisresurfaces a long-running concern with managing innovation in two different modes,namely “exploitation” and “exploration”.This thesis reports the results of exploratory research into specific aspects of theorganizational culture within the Research and Development (R&D) setting of a smallmature UK based company, Cerulean. In doing so it also identifies and discusses keymanagement interventions for developing an innovation culture that facilitates radicalproduct innovation. Cerulean designs and manufactures quality control instrumentationand has in the past been very successful with radically new products. In recent yearsthis propensity for “radicalness” has declined and the company now wishes to regainthis capability. A grounded research methodology and a participative action researchapproach was utilised to surface issues that clearly illustrated both the presence andintensity of aspects of organisation culture that enabled and inhibited radical productinnovation. Participative analysis of the data identified nine emerging themes and keyconstructs of an innovation culture that was found to influence “radicalness” in newproduct development ventures. The interrelationships between the themes werediscussed in the context of current theoretical perspectives in the field of innovationmanagement. This led to the development of a conceptual model that incorporates two“ideal” archetypal forms of innovation culture. A composite instrument was developedbased on existing evaluation tools and used to assess the innovation culture. First use ofthe instrument indicated areas of opportunity in developing a radical innovation culture.Further participative analysis of the emergent themes and the assessment andevaluations of the extant innovation culture, resulted in a series of managementinterventions to stimulate the development of a culture to facilitate radical productinnovation. The design of the interventions was also informed by the literature andother organizations, part of a national Discontinuous Innovation Forum (DIF)undergoing similar ambitions. The proposed interventions comprise a series of linkedmanagement actions in the form of a plan to shift the innovation culture of the companycloser to a desired radical innovation culture.
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