Behind the stage: the making of innovation practice in private organisations

Abstract

This paper reports on a study that investigated how and by whom innovation practice is organised in private organisations. The authors apply a sociomaterial perspective from which innovation must be understood as the emergent result of the inseparable interplay between the social and the material, i.e., human and non-human actors. Eight interviews with innovation managers are analysed with a new method that is called 'performative agential method'. This method allows making the inseparability of the social and the material visible and describable. Findings show that in innovation practices, actor-networks develop when actors make their interests relevant to other actors. Open innovation literature is confirmed insofar as particularly actors coming from outside of the organisation are found to be highly relevant for innovation practices. However, this study also reveals that it is not necessarily human actors who trigger innovation processes.