Int. Journal of Business Science and Applied Management, Volume 4, Issue 3, 2009

Managing innovation as communicative processes: a case of

subsea technology R&D

Tone Merethe Berg Aasen

NTNU Social Research Ltd

Studio Apertura, 7491 Trondheim - Norway

Tel: +47 93059051

Email: tone.berg.aasen@apertura.ntnu.no

Stig Johannessen

Bodo Graduate School of Business

8049 Bodo – Norway

Tel: +47 92035007

Email: stigjo@bntv.no

Abstract

Exploration of the communicative nature of innovation processes and the impact of this on innovation

management has largely been ignored in innovation research. This paper suggests that the adoption of a

complex responsive processes perspective opens up for insight and implications that depart from the

prevailing view of what it means to manage joint efforts for innovation in business organizations. A

key contribution is the suggestion that a change of perspective on organizations from conceptions of

“whole” to notions of joint human interaction implies a need to increase management attention to the

detail of local interaction between people striving to construct meaning out of new and ongoing themes,

for the company and for them. We base our claims on an empirical example, drawn on a longitudinal

research initiative conducted in cooperation with the Norwegian petroleum company Statoil.

Keywords: complex responsive processes, innovation management, innovation processes, subsea

increased oil recovery

Acknowledgements: An earlier version of this paper was presented at the ICA 2008 conference in

Montreal. We thank Professor James Taylor of the University de Montreal for the valuable insights

provided on that manuscript. We also thank the IJBSAM editor and peer reviewers for their helpful

comments on this manuscript.

Tone Merethe Berg Aasen and Stig Johannessen

1 INTRODUCTION

Research on the phenomenon of innovation began to grow and proliferate in the 1960s, but did not

truly gain momentum until about 20 years ago. Today, innovation is seen as the main enabler of long-

term company viability, and is broadly recognized as being about thinking ‟outside the box‟ (Borgelt &

Falk, 2007). The comprehensive interest in understanding the innovation journey (Van de Ven, Polley,

Garud & Venkataraman, 1999) has been accompanied by a concurrent interest in identifying the

managerial moves necessary to ensure safe arrival at a predetermined destination (Davila, Epstein, &

Shelton. 2006; Ettlie, 2006; Goffin & Mitchell, 2005; Snyder & Duarte, 2003; Tidd, Bessant, & Pavitt,

2005). The results are ambiguous, but the apparent challenge of innovation management is to create an

environment of perpetual innovation, where everyone is committed to excellence, resulting in growth

and sustained competitive advantage. Another remaining idea seems to be that properly informed

managers will be able to control the progress of innovation in such a way that the results will be, within

defined limits, in accordance with some strategic intent.

This paper seeks to progress our understanding of what it may mean to manage innovation

processes in business organizations. Drawing on a quadrennial research collaboration with the

Norwegian petroleum company Statoil

, and adopting the theory of complex responsive processes

(Griffin, 2002; Shaw, 2002; Stacey, Griffin, & Shaw, 2000; Stacey, 2001; 2007), we have suggested

elsewhere that the fundamental nature of innovation is communicative interaction, leading to evolving

patterns of themes experienced as unpredictable and uncontrollable (Johannessen & Aasen, 2007). We

have further argued that the communicative interaction can be seen as joint patterning processes of

power and identity, influenced by everybody involved, although certain individuals always have a

larger say (Aasen & Johannessen, 2007).

Our view of innovation as emergent patterns of themes evolving in the interplay between

interdependent individuals has exposed a problem concerning established ideas of innovation

management. From a complex responsive processes perspective organizational processes are joint

human interaction, where individual and organizational characteristics evolve as two aspects of the

same process. Human interaction is not seen to lead to any process-independent „system‟, only to

further communicative interaction. The management of such processes in organizations has been

referred to as an activity “emerging in groups of interacting individuals engaged in collaborative

action” (Tobin, 2005, p.67). This view brings to the fore a question whether one should expect

individual managers to be able to design or even intentionally articulate a jointly desired generalized

pattern, such as future organizational states or guidelines for collaborative behaviour.

In this paper, we discuss some of our experiences as participants in a comprehensive Statoil R&D

initiative for increased oil recovery, emphasizing what we see to be important, yet traditionally

overlooked aspects of innovation management. Our key findings, which are discussed in section 6, are

the consequence of purposive reflection on own experiences in Statoil as well as on accounts of various

events given by company members. Before we go into the discussion, we provide a brief review of the

established literature on innovation management, and of the distinguishing features and the

methodological orientation of the complex responsive processes perspective. Next, we will present the

specific research approach, and the Subsea Increased Oil Recovery case. In conclusion, we outline

some of the possible practical implications of our findings, and suggest a direction for further research.

2 PERSPECTIVES ON INNOVATION MANAGEMENT

Industrial leaders encourage innovation based on expectations of improved business performance.

Nevertheless, such processes are more often than not met with opposition, possibly because

development and adoption of novelty also involves risk. Examination of various contributions within

the field of innovation management leaves an impression that the main challenge of innovation

management is the simultaneous handling of demands on profitability, seen as a necessity for company

short-term survival, involving cost control, workforce reduction, efficiency, and value-chain

optimizing; and innovation, seen as essential for long-term viability, involving creativity,

experimentation, uncertainty, and the risk of failure (e.g. Ettlie, 2006; Tidd et al.; 2005; Trott, 2005).

The complexity of this challenge is emphasized among others by Tidd (2001), who has made a

comprehensive review of current research on innovation. He points out the random unpredictability of

The examples provided in this paper are derived from a study concluded in September 2007. The

references are therefore made mainly to Statoil, and not to StatoilHydro, which was formally

established on 1 October 2007, following a merger.

Int. Journal of Business Science and Applied Management / Business-and-Management.org

innovation and the diversity of research approaches as the main reasons that knowledge about

innovation management still appears to be incoherent and difficult to translate into clear prescriptions.

We find that recent literature on innovation management brings into focus three particular areas of

management responsibility, which are organization, competition and value realization. The main

objective of organization focused innovation research is to indentify organizational characteristics

promoting company innovativeness (e.g. Arad, Hanson, & Schneider, 1997; Ravichandran, 2000;

Siguaw, Simpson, & Enz, 2006). The intention is to generate knowledge which managers can

implement into their organization so as to increase general innovative capacity. Researchers focusing

on competitive conditions analyze decisions seen to be of strategic importance, cooperation and

alliances, selection of markets and market strategies, and areas for innovation. This research involves

the view that managers can choose a strategic approach to innovation dependent on available resources

and the competitive context (e.g. Grant, 1991; Teece, Pisano, & Shuen, 1997).

The third area, which we refer to as value realization, includes research focusing on factors having

impact on the outcome of innovation processes (e.g. Durand, 2004; Neely, Fillipini, Forza, Vinelli, &

Hii, 2001). In this context, organizations can be seen as actors which create and take ownership of

value (Wijnberg, 2004). The realization of value as the outcome of innovation processes is related to

the ability of a company to convert new knowledge, scientific breakthroughs, and technological

advances into economic success. This view has engendered vast interest in theories of organizational

learning (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995), collective knowledge (Glynn, 1996), knowledge management

(Quinn, Anderson, & Finkelstein, 1998), communities of practice (Wenger, 1998), and indeed,

innovation management (Davila et al., 2006; Tidd et al., 2005; Trott, 2005). Furthermore, the effect of

collaborative processes on innovation and business performance is discussed by several researchers

(Cohen & Levinthal, 1990; Durand, 2004; Tsai, 2001; Chesbrough, Vanhaverbeke, & West, 2006).

Although the defining feature of processes of innovation is pointed out to be complexity and

uncertainty (Tidd, 2001), most authors hold on to assumptions of management controllability of such

processes, justified by the observation that many companies survive and renew over time (Tidd et al.,

2005). As distinct from most researchers, Van de Ven et al. (1999) point out that managers at many

hierarchical levels are involved in the management of innovation, and that in spite of a widespread

view that managers have a uniform, common perspective; managing innovation does involve diversity

and conflict. Accordingly, their suggestion is that innovation processes may be inherently

uncontrollable and that a relaxation of “traditional notions of managerial control” (p. 66) is needed. In

this paper we address the problem described by Van de Ven et al. (ibid.), by adopting a complex

responsive processes perspective as the theoretical basis.

3 THE COMPLEX RESPONSIVE PROCESSES PERSPECTIVE – DISTINGUISHING

FEATURES AND METHODOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS

As will be further described in section 4 and 5, our research situation was highly participative.

Implicitly, a theoretical perspective focusing on “real time” human interaction was demanded. The

basic idea of the complex responsive processes perspective, which is the perspective adopted in this

study, is the importance of taking the experiences of human action and interaction seriously (Stacey,

2001; 2007). The distinguishing features of this perspective are that all human relating is seen as

fundamentally communicative, and that ideas of the autonomous individual and the objective

observer/manager are replaced by assumptions of the simultaneous social construction of group and

individual identities (Stacey, 2007). The methodological position is that of reflexivity in both

individual and social terms.

An important source of inspiration of this perspective is Elias (1978; 2000). He argued that even if

people do plan and do have intentions, they inevitably also participate in figurations of interaction in

which power is always an intrinsic property. He saw such figurations of power to be asymmetric,

meaning that individuals influence the communicative interaction they are part of to a greater or lesser

extent. Elias therefore suggested a non-linear, paradoxical, transformative causality between human

action and the outcome of social processes. The non-linearity means that even small variations in

themes have the potential to lead to radical global re-patterning of conversations and power relations,

sometimes referred to as the „butterfly effect‟ (Lorentz, 2000). For organizations, this should mean that

conflicts between actions, plans and purposes of interdependent people leads to repetition and change

as aspects of the same process, and that this is essential for novelty to emerge and evolve (Leana &

Barry, 2000). Elias‟ view could therefore be seen as an opportune reminder that human nature makes it

improbable that one individuals‟ plan or intention should become dominant as the long-term reality of

everybody in the organization.

Tone Merethe Berg Aasen and Stig Johannessen

The methodological orientation of the complex responsive processes perspective is grounded on

the thinking of George H. Mead (Stacey & Griffin, 2005). Mead saw human social life as perpetual

movement, emerging in responsive processes of negotiation and reality constructions. He argued that

mind, consciousness, self-consciousness and society are reflexively co-constituted through

communicative gesture and response cycles of meaning-making, in which individuals relate and act in

cooperative-conflictual interdependencies with other people (Mead, 1967).

Elias and Mead shared the view that reality is seen to develop because of social interaction. In

consequence, the source of creativity and innovation lies in the transformative potential of the

continuous mutual adjustments of meaning between people doing whatever they do during their

working days. Note that from this perspective people are always seen to be in practice, and practice is

experienced through participation. Furthermore, experience is understood as personal experience of

interaction. Consistent with these ideas, the present study was carried out with an explorative attitude

referred to as emergent participative exploration (Christensen, 2005). The term emergent is

conceptualized to represent the formation of meaning for the participating researcher from the

exploration of one activity or situation. The emerging meaning then guides the suggestion of the next

activity of exploration, as well as the development of specific themes appearing to be of particular

relevance to the situations explored.

Characteristic of this approach is the connection made between research and identity, implying the

view that researchers, as participants in organizational everyday life, influence the processes studied.

Even more importantly, it is assumed that the researcher may change in the same process. Emergent

participative exploration therefore shows similarity, but also distinct differences, to action research

(discussed e.g. by Williams, 2005). In our view, emergent participative exploration can be seen as the

researchers‟ intent of experiencing everyday social processes in organizations, rather than being about a

particular method. This means that we see it appropriate to apply different qualitative methods as we

know them traditionally, as part of the process of developing new meaning.

4 RESEARCH APPROACH

In connection with the establishment of six strategic research and development (R&D) programs

in Statoil in 2003/2004, an idea had developed among a few managers in the Technology division that

one of the programs, called Subsea Increased Oil Recovery (SIOR), provided a good starting point for

evaluation of their internal processes for innovation. The four members of the SIOR core team (CT)

accepted the presence of a researcher as part of their team, and so the first author of this paper was

invited to join them. She was engaged in Statoil for four years, and granted an ID card, the opportunity

to work on-site, and to access internal databases, e-mail system and intranet. The study lasted from

January 2004 to October 2007, but the collaboration with StatoilHydro is still ongoing.

The study mainly involved participation in ongoing formal and informal meetings and

conversations intended to lead to innovation in Statoil, but also interviews, consultative intervention

and studies of written material. As an implication of the research situation, our view of innovation

management in Statoil is primarily based on experience from the Research Centre. We were, however,

given the opportunity to interview leaders and workers in all the business areas involved: Technology

& Projects, Exploration & Production Norway, and International Exploration & Production, many of

them holding key positions. This gave us the opportunity to evolve and challenge our impressions of

ongoing company activities for change and innovation, including managers‟ contributions to these

processes. The respondents interviewed were persons recommended by our main contact persons in

Statoil. In addition, we included persons we met during the study who, assumingly, would help us

broaden our perspective on Statoil innovation processes.

Examples from the SIOR program are described and analyzed by use of a narrative style. The

narratives are based on three kinds of input, which are the factual story about evolving events,

individual stories offered in conversations between the first author and Statoil members, and finally,

own reflections about experiences as SIOR program participant. The SIOR program made a very rich

case, and in the process of going through notes and memories, we intentionally picked out and

composed stories to support the communication of our present understanding of the innovation

processes we were part of. Our analysis could therefore be seen to be our understanding of the

particular and general themes discussed by people we spoke to. A key objection to this research, as it

may be to all participative research methods, is thus the biased subjectivity of the approach by which

the results are obtained and presented. In line with Peller (1987), we argue that in the end, research

results always depend on the subjective choices of the researcher about what to do, how to do it, and

how to interpret, analyse, and present the material. The analytical method used is that of intentionally

Int. Journal of Business Science and Applied Management / Business-and-Management.org

reflecting on the details of one‟s experience of organizational processes, as basis for new insights and

practices.

5 STATOIL AND THE SIOR CASE

The Norwegian oil and gas company StatoilHydro is the leading operator on the Norwegian

continental shelf (NCS). With its modest 29,000 employees (current numbers), it is a relatively small

company compared to its competitors

. The conditions on the NCS have, however, made extreme

demands on technology. This has lead to the recognition of the company as a world-leader in the use of

innovative technology, and brought it to the position of being the world‟s largest operator of deepwater

fields. According to their web-site (www.statoilhydro.com), StatoilHydro aim at sustaining long term

profitable growth through increased international activities and renewed efforts on the NCS. The latter

scope is connected to an objective to increase oil recovery, but also to a necessity of avoiding the

hidden threat of having to close down fields which are becoming unprofitable.

Compared to the previous, comprehensive field developments, recent NCS fields are smaller, and

present value estimates leave little time and money for technology development. Still, the need for

innovation is as pressing as ever. This has promoted a demand for increased collaboration within the

company to develop new technology and work processes across business assets. As most StatoilHydro

projects and operations are also conducted in cooperation with other companies, the management of

development activities in the company by and large implies managing collaborative teams composed of

people from various internal departments, and from one or more external companies.

The strategic R&D programs initiated in the Statoil Research Centre 2003/2004 were seen to be an

important measure to promote the renewed efforts on the NCS. These were umbrella programs

intended to embrace and adapt ongoing research activities according to program ambitions, as well as

to frame new initiatives. The SIOR program was granted an annual budget of about 25 million Euros.

The objective of the program was to provide technology making probable the increased production of

oil from existing and future Statoil operated subsea fields on the NCS from the 2003 average of 43% to

an average of 55% in 2008. This would mean the production of about 1.4 billion barrels of extra oil

over the estimated lifetime of the fields, corresponding at the time to an added gross profit of about 70

billion US$. This ambition was judged to be unattainable through the use of existing technologies, and

implied the need for accelerated development and testing of technologies in the pipeline, as well as for

the generation of completely new concepts.

As no single concept could meet the 55 % SIOR ambition, the program eventually embraced about

25 different development activities, spanning technology connected with the identification of drainage

points and intervention needs, improvement of production management, provision of low cost drainage

points and intervention, reduction of well head pressures and increase of liquid handling capacity. The

activities involved more than 100 persons, of whom about half were employed in other companies. A

core team (CT) of four hand-picked people was composed to manage the program. All of them were

experienced managers and specialists having worked many years in Statoil operational units, and

representing different disciplines within petroleum engineering.

Few SIOR activities were started from scratch. Work had been ongoing in the Research Centre

and in other parts of Statoil for a long time, aiming at the development of various technologies to

render possible the recovery of increased volumes of oil. The experience of those involved, among

them future members of the SIOR core team, was that it was hard to attract attention towards this kind

of initiatives in the company, and that it generally did not result in anything. The idea of framing

individual projects having similar intentions into an umbrella program with an overall ambition was

therefore launched as an attempt to direct the top management‟s attention towards the potentiality of

such activities, and to facilitate communication about them in the company. The approach appeared to

work, as the SIOR ambition gradually got fully backed up by the top management.

6 INNOVATION MANAGEMENT AS ACTS OF PARTICIPATION

The basic idea of the SIOR program was that the combination of operational unit requirements and

the creative capabilities of Statoil researchers and specialists, and experts from other companies, would

lead to the generation of new technologies tailored to enable the increased efficiency of subsea oil

production. Statoil was taking on the dual role of customer and technology provider, assigning the role

In comparison, Shell employs 108,000 people, Chevron 56,000, Total 95,000, and BP 97,000.

Tone Merethe Berg Aasen and Stig Johannessen

of provider to its Research Centre. The argumentation was in line with Thamhain (2003), who claims

that the hallmark of capable R&D teams is that they generate innovative ideas, but also “transfer newly

created concepts through the organizational system for economic gain” (p. 297), and with von Hippel

(2005), who asserts the importance of user-centred innovation. The program was characterized by the

assignment of a specified, measurable end target, and the diversity of technology developments needed

to succeed.

SIOR was, however, also about the introduction and implementation of new ways of working in

the company. The most important of the change initiatives was the top management expectation about

closer cooperation between Statoil researchers and members of operational units. Until then most of the

larger development projects had been performed in collaborations between Statoil operating unit

members and external suppliers, and the role of the researchers in these projects was generally seen to

be modest. The authorization given to SIOR members to take a leading role in business development

was therefore seen as unusual, and was referred to as a “different way of working”. In this particular

case, then, innovation management was not only about managing technology development, but also

about preparing for the adoption of new technology elements by Statoil-operated fields, as well as

bringing it all about through approaches to collaboration which in several ways were unfamiliar to the

persons involved. In this section, we address key findings related to this versatile task, seen from the

perspective of complex responsive processes. The findings are illustrated in Table 1.

Table 1: Key issue and key findings of research

Key issue

Method

Key findings

Assuming that innovation

is communication

processes, what does it

mean to manage

innovation in business

organizations?

Emergent

participative

exploration

a) The principal task of innovation management is

participative actions intended to influence emerging

patterns of themes, to support the collective

movement towards a desirable future situation

b) Innovation management involves dealing with

various phenomena of group dynamics, including

insider/outsider relations. Top management support

and the attribution of credibility to the innovation

manager from involved parties are important

supportive factors.

c) Innovation management is the courageous,

continued exploration of experiences of being

together in spite of potential conflicts. This involves

the acknowledgement of paradox, and of the

simultaneous need for sustained pluralism and

widespread joint meaning.

d) The idea of management participation is on a

collision course with predominant management

ideas. of planning, predictability, control, and

monitoring

Managing phenomena of group dynamics

A common objection among operational unit members to the leading role in innovation given to

the Research Centre was that they understood better the business challenges facing Statoil than did

most of the researchers. Although most acknowledged that there were a lot of excellent niche experts in

the Research Centre, operational unit members also meant that they were better trained as project

managers. From their side, several of the researchers expressed a view that neither members of the

SIOR CT, nor of the operational units, fully appreciated that inventing technology was somewhat more

complicated than to “sit down and just decide to get a break-through”. In some cases, this seemed to

lead to a clash of interests which constrained cooperation between members of the operational units,

and the researchers. However, the full support given to the SIOR program by the top management

appeared to pressure the involved parties to exert themselves so that activities progressed.

In line with Van de Ven et al. (1999) we observed that the differences between the members of the

Research Centre and the operational units were also reflected among the managers. Partly because of

this, the role of the SIOR CT members gradually evolved to be that of technology broker, or

intermediary between development and adoption processes. We were told that this was a new role in

the company, judged to be very important for the realization of the SIOR ambition. The SIOR CT

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members‟ knowledge of current business processes appeared to provide the credibility among

operational unit managers that was not attributed to many of the researchers. The reputation of the head

of the SIOR CT as an experienced and able manager was particularly important, and opened doors to

persons and meetings of great importance to SIOR. On the other hand, from our position is seemed that

the former experience of the SIOR CT members made them somewhat less accepted by members of the

Research Centre.

The preceding elaboration suggests that research attention should be directed to the theme of

identity in groups, experiences of inclusion and exclusion, and the quality of relations. Mead (1967)

claimed that „we‟ identities in groups are based on generalisations. As „we‟ identities develop,

simultaneous perceptions of „them‟ evolve, resulting in a paradoxical dynamics of inclusion and

exclusion of individuals. Such activities, which will always be part of the process of forming and

identifying with a group, are accompanied by the tendency to label groups of people in ways that

enforce the difference between „us‟ and „them‟ (Stacey, 2007). This tends to leave us with an

impression of the uniformity of group characteristics. Hence, what people produce when they interact

in the living present could be seen as the continuous creation and recreation of individual-group

identity. In line with our experience, Elias and Scotson (1994) argue that raising issues of „us‟ and

„them‟ relationships can uncover insider and outsider relations in which diverse groupings develop or

damage their cooperation. Correspondingly, Stacey (2007) points out that power differentials between

groups may create a powerful dynamics in organisations, probably constituting one of the main reasons

for the failure of attempts to realise strategic intents. Seen like this, the task of the SIOR CT members

could be seen to be the re-patterning of the experience of identity among people involved in SIOR, with

the intention to enable new ways of working together.

Managing emerging patterns of themes

The SIOR CT members were continually participating in meetings and conversations, sometimes

involving two persons, sometimes twenty. They kept repeating the 55 % ambition, but at the same time

they spoke of specific technology elements, such as Light Well Intervention; Wet gas compression; or

Shared Earth modelling, and about the business opportunities related to the adoption of such

technologies by the various NCS fields. In concurrence with this, they made contact with Statoil

information associates, who they educated by inviting them to relevant expositions and meetings. They

also made sure that the top managers were always provided with the latest SIOR presentation material.

After about two years it was commented in a core team meeting that they had been talking so much

about the SIOR technologies that people in other petroleum companies started to implement them

before Statoil did. Gradually, what emerged in the wake of this intensive communicative effort was a

widespread opinion in the company that the 55 % ambition and the activities performed as part of the

SIOR program were appropriate.

Our finding is that the ideas of the SIOR program was formed by various interests, but at the same

time gradually formed, and transformed, the interests of those who in some way were engaged in the

activities. This is in accordance with a perspective on organizations as patterns of interactions, where

ongoing processes are influenced by many individuals in many roles, deliberately and unconsciously. It

also supports one of the core ideas of the complex responsive perspective, which is that meaning is not

determined by a gesture (like a statement or a move), but by the responses brought out by that gesture

(Stacey, 2005). This leads to a cyclic movement of further gestures and responses in which meaning is

formed, and power relations and senses of identity and meaning potentially affected. Implicitly, when

people attempt to design or change some global pattern, like „us‟ and „them‟ relationships, they are

doing nothing more than making a gesture, although this can be a very powerful gesture (Elias, 2000).

What is emerging, are patterns of responses that no one individual could have decided, and that may

involve the experience of novelty. It is, however, not given that the emerging patterns are perceived as

„suitable‟ or „successful‟. We see this as a particularly important point, which is rarely taken into

account when innovation processes are discussed.

This further underlines a problem attached with the idea that innovation can be predetermined by

the actions of particular individuals, such as managers, and emphasizes the intrinsic collective nature of

innovation processes. At the same time, it indicates that individual and joint experiences of meaning

and identity are found, and alters, in the ordinary, everyday conversations between people at work. In

our view, this emphasizes the need to increase management attention on the detail of local interaction

between people striving to particularize the significance of new and ongoing themes for the company

and for them. Accordingly, the present rather one-sided focus on management acts as the development

and following-up of steering documents and key performance indicators should be replaced by the

recognition of the potentially even greater significance of management as acts of participation. Two

points should be attached to this claim. One is that, as participants in the social processes of organized

Tone Merethe Berg Aasen and Stig Johannessen

life, managers should be regarded as free, and at the same time constrained, in choosing their own

actions. Secondly, the actions they decide will expose their colleagues and subordinates to both

possibilities and constraints.

Innovation management as disturbance and stabilization

The enabling constraints intrinsic in all human relating and the dynamics of inclusion/exclusion

created between groups indicate that paradox is an inevitable part of such everyday interaction. We see

the experience of paradox as being of particular importance in relation to innovation, which inherently

entails the introduction or emergence of novel ideas. This means that reproduction of currently

stabilized themes is disturbed, and so it is reasonable to expect that novel ideas may be perceived as

controversial. This may cause uncertainty and even conflict between individuals and groups who

incline towards re-establishing habitual patterns of themes, and those who pursue the new ones.

Shifting experiences of identity and difference, inclusion and exclusion, inspiration and anxiety,

freedom and control, and of structures of power, are likely to cause enthusiasm with some, and doubt

and resistance with others. Such processes should not be seen to approach a mature or final state, but as

being continued by individuals participating in local, everyday interaction, perpetually creating and

recreating ideas about their intentions and possibilities.

While much of the existing management literature is about punctuating paradoxical situations, for

example by recommending the introduction of unambiguous, measurable ambitions and objectives, our

view is that managers should rather seek to capitalize on the pluralism which is the inherent property of

paradox. Innovation can be found nowhere but in the emerging patterns of themes, which spread out

and evolve because people take part in many local conversations. On the other hand, the intrinsic

challenge of organizational achievement is the need for coordinated action between many people, and

such collaboration depends on the production of “emergent, coherent, meaningful patterns of

interaction both locally and population-wide at the same time” (Stacey, 2007, p. 434). Our findings

indicate that in the myriad of ordinary, local meetings, themes are reiterated and sometimes

transformed. This may enable joint action, or inhibit it. We therefore suggest that innovation depends

not only upon the emergence of novel patterns of themes, but also on the diffusion and temporary

stabilization of the evolving patterns among people whose cooperation is needed to render possible the

enactment of the new themes.

Consistent with this idea, the continued intention of the SIOR CT members was clearly to bring

locally evolving patterns of themes under the sway of the SIOR ideas in such a way that the decisions

made by field directors or others whose actions affected the program activities were in favour of the

realization of the SIOR ambition. A problem frequently discussed was how to ensure this. As expressed

by one of the CT members: “The problem is not the conversations I am part of, the problem is those

conversations in which I am not a part”. His experience was that patterns of talk emerging in his

presence did indeed change as they were further evolved in conversations between other people, and

not always in ways seen by him as favourable.

According to Fonseca (2002) pluralism in conversation is of vital importance for innovation. He

further suggests that this pluralism is experienced by humans as misunderstanding. By

misunderstanding he seems to mean the lack of joint meaning, leading to the continual shift and

evolvement of the patterning processes of new themes because of the current introduction of new

themes and ideas into the emerging patterns. Fonseca argues that the continued disturbance of

emerging thematic patterns of experience may prevent premature or unwanted stabilization of themes.

We see this interpretation of misunderstanding as a support to our observation that innovation emerged

from prolonged communicative processes characterized by conflict, ambiguity and persuasion. In

consequence, innovation management involves the courageous, continued exploration of the

experiences of being together in spite of potential conflicts. On the other hand, tolerance for the kind of

misunderstanding described by Fonseca (2002) appeared to be relatively low in meetings between

SIOR members and people working in the operational units. A widespread expectation in Statoil

seemed rather to be that the particular intention of the SIOR CT should be the enabling of controlled

movement towards a desirable future organizational state.

Another experience was that the frequent introduction of new themes made by the Statoil top

management and by other people in managerial positions represented a diversion of attention in the

company from the SIOR ambition towards competing tasks and ideas. In consequence, the re-

stabilization of the SIOR idea through the repeated communication of possibilities and promising

results appeared to be an aspect as important for innovation success as was the maintenance of

ambiguity.

Int. Journal of Business Science and Applied Management / Business-and-Management.org

A problem with participation

Prevailing management values, placing emphasis on efficiency, monitoring, control and short-term

profit (Miles, 2007), seemed to be highly esteemed in Statoil, even in connection with processes

referred to as innovation. In addition, the top management appeared to be inspired by the principles of

value based management (Black, Wright, Bachman, Makall, & Wright, 1998). Among other things, this

implied the introduction of prescriptive statements and visionary themes intended to direct the attention

of company members towards specific objectives, like the need for innovation. Given the current view

of the significance of innovation for business prosperity, it is no surprise that people in executive

positions are prone to the temptation of subjecting innovation processes to the same procedures for

strategy and control as other business processes. Moreover, the dominance of research ignoring

phenomena of group dynamics and non-linear, time dependent effects of action involves that managers

are offered models of organizational processes that do not and cannot capture the temporally embedded

accounts that enable them to understand how emerging and evolving patterns come to be.

The current management expectation about performance measurements appears to be in

opposition to our view of innovation management as the purposeful participation in communicative

interaction. In Statoil, there seemed to be a never-ending demand for various kinds of project

documentation. Although this was emphasized to be a problem by several of the managers engaged in

SIOR activities, because it meant that they often had to leave their subordinates to their own devices,

most seemed to accept the situation. Only a few openly said that they prioritized communication with

their subordinates, to help them particularize the generalized project ambitions into their specific

situations, and also to encourage people to communicate face to face about new ideas, within and

across disciplines. “They need to see themselves in all the „us‟”, one of these managers pointed out.

The dilemma she and others faced when they focused on participation was that this kind of action was

not “visible” in the company; their individual level of achievement could not be measured. Given the

predominant management thinking in Statoil, they therefore felt that they were not really recognized as

leaders by their superiors.

Paradoxically, it seemed that while what the SIOR members largely wanted was management

attention towards their professional skills and challenges, the top management gradually tightened the

demand for proofs of control, such as accounts and forecasts. This suggests that a question of particular

interest is how decision makers think about their intentions when they are suggesting propositions and

even orders, and of the possibilities and limitations of using target setting, planning and monitoring as

basis for long-term organizational performance. From our perspective, the introduction of prescriptions

and visionary themes are indeed important tools in the process of leading, and can be seen as factors

contributing to the creation of meaning, but not as contributors to the achievement of control. Rather,

mechanisms for structure and control should be seen as non-responding, response provoking tools,

causing organizational members to feel enabled, but also constrained by their implications, depending

on situation.

Our experience was that the actions following the introduction of the 55 % ambition emerged as

the outcome of interplay between rules, plans, intentions, and choices, and were primarily patterned as

narrative themes, affected by and affecting ongoing and emerging patterns. Management attention

towards the challenges and needs of persons engaged in development projects clearly stimulated and

supported innovation efforts. Based on this, we see the principal task for managers of innovation to be

explorative and participative actions intended to inspire and motivate, but also „force‟, the members of

an organization towards the joint creation and realization of an imagined future, concurrently guided by

the insight that the future is unknowable. Accordingly, management inclination to focus on general

values and on control and monitoring of development processes could be seen as a disregard for the

significance of participation as a management tool in innovation processes. The issue should rather be

what purpose prescriptive and visionary formulations serve, what the emerging patterns of

communication in ordinary everyday organizational life in response to such formulations are, and how

we can understand innovation processes as being a part of this.

7 IMPLICATIONS OF RESEARCH

Our experience in SIOR demonstrates that company members are influenced by innovation; yet

will influence the processes, consciously or unconsciously, at the same time. Therefore, innovation is a

collective achievement, and, implicitly, a collective responsibility. This means that innovation

managers should pay attention to individuals‟ possibility to go on together in the face of the

paradoxical dynamics of conflict and cooperation characterizing innovation processes. An issue in this

is the need that managers engage in conversations about the apparent tension between demands for

efficiency and for innovation, and about the influence of their own actions on ongoing and emerging

Tone Merethe Berg Aasen and Stig Johannessen

innovation processes. In our view, the complex responsive processes perspective basically offers the

opportunity to reflect on the manner in which people are reasoning as one of many aspects of human

action in organized life, instead of taking rationality for granted. For managers, this means the

possibility to take seriously their own experiences as leaders by focusing on what they actually do, and

not on what they did or plan to do. Accordingly, we suggest that anagement team members may profit

from spending more time in joint reflection not only about how to solve technological problems and

meet with measurable business targets, but on own relevant everyday experiences, to explore what

these experiences may mean to their individual and joint possibility of and capacity for innovation.

Similarly, increased awareness of approaches to explore, clarify, and possibly develop emerging

patterns of themes among innovation process participants appears to be a valuable investment of time.

Although preliminary, the results of the present study encourage continued exploration of the

complex responsive processes perspective as an alternative way to research and explain processes

intended to lead to innovation in companies. The principal objective of future research should be to

extend our understanding of human interaction related to the development and exploitation of

innovation in and between commercial companies and other organizations, to learn more about

communicative aspects salient in innovation processes, and how these are enacted in different contexts.

The objective is to understand better how such processes can be managed and supported, and to explore

alternative approaches to describe innovation in terms of profitability and growth. We see individual

and joint processes of particularization and functionalization of generalized ideas to be of particular

research interest, because these processes are prerequisite for managers to be able to enact innovation

in ordinary, local interactions in the living present. Accordingly, researchers‟ attention should be on

issues and aspects emerging from the responsive processes of relating between people, in which

thematic patterns caused among other things by considerations related to profit, politics, safety and

reputation, but also to technology, physical environments, as well as habit, intertwine and evolve in

unpredictable ways.

8 CONCLUSION

Drawing on a 4-year engagement in Statoil, we have discussed important aspects of innovation

management, seen from a complex responsive processes perspective. Our study was carried out in

accordance with the ideas of emergent participative exploration. We bring to the fore a view that

innovation processes involve widespread movement of thought, which are changes in action.

Implicitly, management measures of presence and support should be focused more than measures of

control. Our suggestion is that innovation management is participative actions intended to influence

emerging patterns of themes, to support the collective movement towards a desirable future situation.

Our findings indicate, however, that the idea of management participation is on a collision course with

predominant management ideas of planning, predictability, control, and monitoring.

Innovation management can be seen as the courageous, continued exploration of experiences of

being together in spite of potential conflicts. This involves the acknowledgement of paradox, and of the

simultaneous need for sustained pluralism and widespread joint meaning. It also involves dealing with

various phenomena of group dynamics, including insider/outsider relations. We find that top

management support and the attribution of credibility to the innovation manager from involved parties

are important success factors.

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