Narrative and Innovation: New Ideas for Business Administration, Strategic Management and Entrepreneurship

261 Pages·2013·7.15 MB·English

by  Dr. Lutz Becker

Management – Culture – Interpretation
Edited by
Andreas P. Müller
Stephan Sonnenburg
Th e book series of the Karlshochschule International University explores new ideas
and approaches to management, organizations and economy from a cultural and
interpretive point of view. Th e series intends to integrate diff erent perspectives
towards economy, culture and society. Th erefore, management and organizational
activities are not seen as being isolated from their context, but rather as context-
bound and dependent on their surrounding cultures, societies and economies.
Within these contexts, activities make sense through the allocation, the interpreta-
tion and the negotiation of meanings. Sense-making can be found in performative
processes as well as the way social meaning is constructed through interactions.
Th e series seeks innovative approaches, both in formulating new research ques-
tions and in developing adequate methodological research designs. We welcome
contributions from diff erent interdisciplinary and collective ways of thinking and
seeking knowledge which focus on the integration of “Management – Culture –
Interpretation”.
Edited by
Prof. Dr. Andreas P. Müller
Prof. Dr. Stephan Sonnenburg
Karlsruhe, Germany
Andreas P. Müller • Lutz Becker (Eds.)
Narrative and Innovation
New Ideas for Business
Administration, Strategic
Management and Entrepreneurship
Editors
Prof. Dr. Andreas P. Müller
Prof. Dr. Lutz Becker
Karlsruhe, Germany

ISBN 978-3-658-01374-5 ISBN 978-3-658-01375-2 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-658-01375-2
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Contents

Lutz Becker & Andreas P. Müller
Foreword ............................................................................................................. 7

Theoretical Approach
Lutz Becker & Andreas P. Müller
Narrative & Innovation ..................................................................................... 11
Roland Hergert
Organizational Perception and Cultural Orientation: A Context-Based
Approach to Corporate Foresight ...................................................................... 31
Alfred Kieser & Suleika Bort
Interview: Fashion, Innovation and Science ..................................................... 47
Anne Reff Pedersen
Collaborative Narrative Innovation. A Case of Public Innovation
in Denmark ....................................................................................................... 57

Back Forwards
Thomas Klug
Dialogue and Innovation. World Café as a Contemporary Format
for Dealing with Questions that Matter ............................................................ 69

Practical Approach
Barbara Czarniawska
The Tales of Institutional Entrepreneurs ........................................................... 89
Leszek Cichob(cid:225)azi(cid:276)ski
Resolving Collective Disputes in Poland: A Narrative Perspective ............... 119
6 Contents
Robb Mitchell
Tangible Business Model Sketches to Facilitate Intersubjectivity
and Creativity in Innovation Encounters ........................................................ 131
Michael Müller
How Innovations Become Successful through Stories ................................... 139
Florian Menz
Interview: Narratives of Unity and Identity in Ambiguous Environments –
A Case of Internal Business Communication ................................................. 151
Phillipe Rixhon
Life and Innovation – A Practitioner’s Narrative ........................................... 157
Kinuyo Shimizu
Intercultural Awareness in Business and Literary Works ............................... 173
Stephan Sonnenburg
Beatles & Co: Creativity as an Emergent Phenomenon .................................. 179
Umair Khalid Khan & Hans Sarv
From Storytelling to Story Creation by the Use of Systemic Meetings –
The Swedish Case ........................................................................................... 199

Outlook
Andreas Zeuch
Riding Dead Horses ........................................................................................ 227
Mihai Nadin
Anticipation: A Bridge between Narration and Innovation ............................ 239

About the Authors ........................................................................................ 265
Foreword

Every revolution was first a thought in one man’s mind.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

The whole thing began when Lutz Becker and Andreas Müller intensively started
discussing Bruce Sterling’s constructivist ideas and motifs expressed in his novel
“Zeitgeist”. A key concept in the novel is the major consensus narrative, a con-
verging discursive construction of social reality.
Is reality a narrative construction? Would it possible to extract trends in soci-
ety and economy from these narratives? Which narratives are really relevant?
The ones spoken in the media, the chats in the supermarket or the narratives in
industrial assembly lines? Would it be possible to extract trends from these nar-
ratives? Could it be a new approach to early recognition in business and society?
Could innovation be derived from these narratives?
While reflecting on research approaches and opportunities as well as methods
and applications for the real business world, the discussion between us both –
Andreas has a background in linguistics and cultural anthropology and Lutz a
background in economics and a professional career in the IT and media business
– produced an overwhelming stream of ideas, questions, and perspectives. In-
deed, Lutz had conducted research on early recognition in the 1980s and 1990s
and Andreas has a long track record in analyzing the discourses in industrial
organizations. It felt like we were opening Pandora’s box.
We tried to share our Pandora’s box by writing a first article on the topic
(Becker and Müller 2010). Nevertheless we had the feeling (and still have) that
we were only scratching the surface. That‘s why we decided to organize a scien-
tific conference at Karlshochschule International University: Narrative and Inno-
vation. Our question was: “How can innovation be derived from societal narra-
tives and how can these narratives contribute to industrial and social innova-
tion?”
Contributors and participants from all over the world reflected on the broad
(and also ambiguous) topic. The faculty met the business community; experts in
linguistics met experts in organizational theory. The topics and outcomes of the
conference were really surprising and exciting for us. The contributors addressed
issues we had not even thought of when planning the conference. Deep-diving
research met truly hands-on business.
8 Foreword
Our book on “Narrative and Innovation” firstly gives an overview of the dis-
cussion during the conference. Secondly, Mihai Nadin, who contributed with an
additional article, completes the reflections on the current state of research. Last
but not least, the narrative itself was included in the book; therefore, we agreed
with three keynote speakers, Florian Menz, and Alfred Kieser together with
Suleika Bort, to publish their contributions in the form of a post-conference in-
terview.
The book gives both academia and the business community a first overview
of a newly emerging and, we believe, pathbreaking and trendsetting research
topic. In a next step we will perform research on the development, application
and improvement of suitable methods, both in research and industry.

Karlsruhe, December 2012 Lutz Becker & Andreas P. Müller

Becker, Lutz/Müller, Andreas P. (2010): Über Narrative und Diskurse Innovationschan-
cen aufspüren. In: Gundlach, Carsten/Gutsche, Jens/Glanz, Axel (eds.) (2010): Die
frühe Innovationsphase – Methoden und Strategien für die Vorentwicklung. Düssel-
dorf: Symposion, pp. 211-245.
Theoretical Approach