Lars Fuglsang

The balance between bricolage and innovation: management dilemmas in sustainable public innovation

Innovation is usually understood as a conscious development and implementation of new products or services. This article takes its starting point in a case study that shows how ‘innovation’ in reality happens as small step ‘bricolage’ – as a ‘do-it-yourself’ problem-solving activity taking place in daily work situations. Consequently, an experiment was carried out with the purpose of testing if, how and with what results the ‘bricolage’ can be better integrated with the organisations more formal innovation procedures.

Innovation as strategic reflexivity

Part 1: Theory Part 2: External Oriented Innovation Part 3: Internal Innovation Activities within the Firm Part 4: Policy

Dynamics of Experience Service Innovation: Innovation as a Guided Activity. Results from a Danish Survey

This paper is a first attempt to identify patterns and dynamics of innovation in experience service firms building on a survey of Danish experience firms. The paper shows that innovation in experience service firms takes place in an open and interactive process drawing on many sources of innovation. At the same time, innovative firms also seek to differentiate themselves strongly from other firms. This indicates that innovation in these firms can be understood as interactive and situated within a division of labour at the same time. Interaction and situation are complementary forces of innovation that seem critical to benefiting from innovation. The paper argues that innovation is both an open and highly situated and guided activity.

The experience turn as ‘bandwagon’: Understanding network formation and innovation as practice

This paper uses the bandwagon metaphor to analyse, in two rural contexts, how small tourism firms become engaged in the idea of the experience economy and how the idea is turned into practice through network formation and innovation. In developing a practice-based approach we use the bandwagon metaphor to conceptualize network formation and innovation in terms of a ‘journey’. Following the practice-based literature on bandwagons, the journey starts by labelling an idea that is broad enough to give meaning to, and pull together, a number of diverse supporters. The journey also depends on two further central processes, namely appropriation and narrowing the workspace. One Norwegian and one Danish network are studied using a case methodology. They are two rural networks of mainly small tourism firms. The empirical study confirms and illustrates how the bandwagon effect involves these three core processes. However, we also argue for the importance of a fourth process, namely strategic reflexivity. The paper closes by suggesting a development model with relevance for policy. The paper offers an increased understanding of how the experience economy as an idea can become practice and puts forward a practice-based development model.

Innovation in the experience sector

This paper presents the first general investigation of innovation in the experience sector based on a survey. Experience firms are very innovative. Their innovation rate is significantly above other sectors’. The characteristics of the innovative experience innovations and innovative firms are similar to those found in services (and to a large degree in manufacturing). The paper also deals with measurement problems in innovation surveys applied to the experience sector and argue that the experience sector should be included in general surveys such as the CIS.

Strategic Reflexivity as a Framework for Understanding Development in Modern Firms. How the Environment Drives Innovation

In this chapter, we argue that ‘strategic reflexivity’ can be seen as one way to conceptualize the development of modern firms. Modern firms and other organizations are often under pressure to develop or innovate in order to survive, but they depend on future markets and environments of which they do not have objective knowledge. Therefore they have to make use of uncertain development strategies within a framework of what we here call ‘strategic reflexivity’. Strategic reflexivity is based on reflexive interpretations about developments in the environment (or the market) of the firm. For instance, what is normally conceived as market driven innovation (Nystrom, 1990; Tidd, Bessant & Pavitt, 1997) must, within the framework of strategic reflexivity, be understood as a process in which the firm does not react directly on the basis of ‘objective’ market changes, but creates an interpretation of the future environment that guides their development process. This approach to strategy can also be found in Mintzberg (1998) as well as Daft and Weick’s (1984) view of the firm as an interpretation system; thus it is not new. What is new in this chapter is the combination of this approach with Weick’s (1995) sense-making approach and the resource-based view of the firm (e.g., Grant, 1991) in an attempt to explain innovation. This theoretical combination is particularly useful as it leads us to a broader interpretation of the concept of innovation and a new model of the innovative organization, which specifies the firm as a system of roles.

Making sense of institutional trust in organizations: bridging institutional context and trust

Institutional-based approaches to trust can explain how trust logics can exist in a societal context as compared to logics of distrust. Strong institutions in the form of regulative, normative and cognitive structures can enable and inspire trust-relations among people at the interpersonal and inter-organizational level. We suggest, however, that the actor-dimension of institutional-based trust is an underexplored issue in the literature. Quoting Fligstein, institutional theory needs to explain how ‘some social actors are better at producing desired social outcomes than are others’ (Fligstein, 1997: 398). While Fligstein refers to actors who engage in ‘robust or local action’ we argue that actors who engage in (robust, local) sensemaking activities are better at (re)producing institutional-based trust. Particularly in situations when institutions are relatively unstable, unfamiliar to the actors and ambiguous, sensemaking strategies directed towards exploring the institutional foundations of trust at a local level can be an important basis of interpersonal trust-relations. First, based on a summary of studies of institutional-based trust we argue that an unresolved issue is how institutions more precisely form the basis for trust-relations. Second, we explore how sensemaking may serve as a bridge between institutional contexts and interpersonal trust processes. Based on Weber and Glynn’s (2006) model of relations between institutions and sensemaking, we argue that institutions are ‘emerging’ rather than ‘impacting’. The relevance of this view of sensemaking for bridging institutional-based and interpersonal trust processes is illustrated by reviewing a case study on how trust is created in a politically turbulent and foreign environment.

Experience economy, creative class and business development in small Danish towns

The Experience Economy is increasingly seen as a potential for cities to attract the creative class and, consequently, to induce business development. In Denmark, not only large cities but also small towns trust in this possibility. However, the applicability of an experience-induced business development in smaller towns may be questioned. This article presents a comparative case study of four small Danish towns which in different ways have developed experiences to attract the creative class and create business development. The analysis discusses how the different strategies have varying results, but also illustrates the severe limitations in creating business development based on experiences and the creative class in smaller towns.

On innovation patterns and value-tensions in public services

In the innovation studies literature, innovation patterns have been described, such as science-based and practice-based innovation, that vary among industrial sectors. As a consequence, firms become distinguished with respect to their typical innovation pattern. Less attention has been paid to the possibility of intertwined innovation patterns. Focusing on public sector services, this paper argues that intertwined innovation patterns emerge within public services as a response to value-tensions. Values can be defined as measures for beneficial behaviour that guide innovation. Value-tensions in public services include tensions between the political, economic, communal, aesthetic and intellectual values. The contribution of the paper to service innovation research is the emphasis on the concept of intertwined innovation patterns, such as the intertwinement of science-driven and task-driven innovation. Furthermore, the paper contributes by pinpointing how varied values guide innovation in public services.

Innovation activity among nurses: The translation and preliminary validation of the Bricolage Measure – a mixed-method study

Qualitatively, research has demonstrated the existence of bricolage among healthcare staff, i.e. solving problems on the spot by resources at hand, and its potential to lead to innovation. However, we know little about the spread of bricolage activity and its potential role for innovation in healthcare. The aim of this study was therefore to provide an instrument for measuring bricolage activity among nurses, to test the measure and learn about the spread of bricolage in nursing in Denmark. We used a mixed-method design including a translation–back translation, a pre-test and a pilot test. Primary data were collected during 2015 via interviews and a survey, including 248 nurses. The analysis revealed that the majority of nurses rated themselves and colleagues as having a high level of bricolage activity. This study’s preliminary validations (content and face validation), of the translated Bricolage Measure, confirmed the usability of the instrument to examine bricolage activity in nursing in Denmark.