Andrew Hargadon

When Innovations Meet Institutions: Edison and the Design of the Electric Light

This paper considers the role of design, as the emergent arrangement of concrete details that embodies a new idea, in mediating between innovations and established institutional fields as entrepreneurs attempt to introduce change. Analysis of Thomas Edisons system of electric lighting offers insights into how the grounded details of an innovations design shape its acceptance and ultimate impact. The notion of robust design is introduced to explain how Edisons design strategy enabled his organization to gain acceptance for an innovation that would ultimately displace the existing institutions of the gas industry. By examining the principles through which design allows entrepreneurs to exploit the established institutions while simultaneously retaining the flexibility to displace them, this analysis highlights the value of robust design strategies in innovation efforts, including the phonograph, the online service provider, and the digital video recorder.

Enhancing Creativity Through “Mindless” Work: A Framework of Workday Design

We propose that organizations use a new framework of workday design to enhance the creativity of todays chronically overworked professionals. Although insights from creativity research have been integrated into models of work design to increase the stimulants of creativity (e.g., intrinsic motivation), this has not led to work design models that have effectively reduced the obstacles to creativity (e.g., workload pressures). As a consequence, creative output among professionals in high-workload contexts remains disappointing. In response, we offer a framework of work design that focuses on the design of entire workdays rather than the typical focus on designing either specific tasks or very broad job descriptions (e.g., as the job characteristics model in Hackman et al. 1975). Furthermore, we introduce the concept of “mindless” work (i.e., work that is low in both cognitive difficulty and performance pressures) as an integral part of this framework. We suggest that to enhance creativity among chronically overworked professionals, workdays should be designed to alternate between bouts of cognitively challenging and high-pressure work (as suggested in the original model by Hackman et al. 1975), and bouts of mindless work (as defined in this paper). We discuss the implications of our framework for theories of work design and creativity.

Technology brokering and innovation: linking strategy, practice, and people

Purpose – The author has spent the last ten years studying the innovation process in modern organizations and found that the most successful firms pursue an innovation strategy termed technology brokering.Design/methodology/approach – How are the objectives achieved? Include the main method(s) used for the research. What is the approach to the topic and what is the theoretical or subject scope of the paper?Findings – Rather than chasing wholly new ideas, these successful firms focus on recombining old ideas in new ways. The results have sparked many technological revolutions and produced a steady stream of growth opportunities for existing businesses.Research limitations/implications – Needs cases showing that technology brokering, and the complementary work practices and people, can successfully execute such a strategy.Practical implications – By transforming traditional R&D organizations through a strategy of technology brokering firms can build competencies for continuous innovation..Originality/value ...

How to discover and assess opportunities for business model innovation

Purpose – The author explains that changing both the company’s offerings and its organization exponentially increases the complexity and uncertainty of any new undertaking, which is why business model innovation is both so difficult and, when successful, so hard for competitors to respond to. Design/methodology/approach – The example of how SolarCity introduced a new business model in 2008 designed around third-party ownership illustrates many of the steps Solar-City took to redesign their offering as well as the capabilities to deliver it. Findings – Design teams often build prototypes of new products and test their performance or test their appeal to users. It is much more difficult to design and test a novel financial model and more difficult still to sell that design to a company’s leadership and its investors or lenders. Practical implications – Rather than dive into details of the product development, organizational design or financials, the innovation team should rank order the largest sources of t...

Domesticating innovation—designing revolutions

Contrary to common views of innovations as being profoundly disruptive, the innovations that succeed are those that are evolutionary, not revolutionary. This chapter examines the way in which design domesticates innovation by nudging users incrementally into adopting new practices. In fact, most successful innovations introduce only moderate amounts of novelty, even drawing off features of older, now-obsolete technologies to frame our understandings of new products in terms of the products we are about to abandon. Even as the 1984 Apple Macintosh desktop made inroads toward rendering our paper files and desktops obsolete, its innovative operating system invoked files, file folders, a desktop, and a trash can. Good design domesticates novelty. However, once an innovation has gained acceptance, the purpose of design shifts toward differentiating between competing versions of the same underlying offerings. The best designs are robust enough to withstand the continuing cycle of domestication and differentiation, changing as technologies advance and users’ sophistication follows.