A routine design strategy to change organisational processes in the front end of radical innovation

Abstract

For technology firms like Barco, radical innovation a way to escape intense competition, but also crucial for long-term survival as they provide the foundations on which future generations of products are created (McDermott & O’Connor, 2002; Sandberg & Aarikk-Stenroos, 2014). However, a required mature radical innovation capability in the front end of the process was lacking (O’Connor & DeMartino, 2006). Therefore, they have to change their internal processes and organisational routines that are regarded as the building blocks for this organisational capability (Junginger, 2008; Salvato & Rerup, 2011). Understanding organisational change is one of the great endeavours of many researchers and management consultants in the field of organisation design. A way to understand organisational change is by looking at organisational routines (Becker, 2005). Organisational routines are important to organisational change, but easier to study (Feldman & Pentland, 2003). However, an understanding how routines are designed or come to life is still a key question in the field of organisation design (Howard-Grenvile, 2005; Wegener et al., 2019). The approach of many managers and consultants of carefully designing PowerPoints and checklists while hoping for routines to change is a mistake (Pentland & Feldman, 2008). This leads to the following research question: How to design an organisational routine that develops a radical innovation capability within a technology firm?To answer this question and to provide organisation designers or organisational researchers empirical insights on how to design a routine in a performative way I developed and executed a routine design strategy. This strategy is based on existing routine design literature (Pentland & Feldman, 2008) and the double diamond approach (Design Council, 2005).This study shows that using a routine design strategy consisting of three interdependent phases are critical to routine design. First, emphasize with routine actors, conduct activities to discover and define the challenges and needs the actors face in their patterns of action. Second, lock in desired performance, prototype in collaboration with the routine actors the desired performances and lock them in a physical artefact. Third, build the ostensive, perform the designed performances in design experiments within a reflective and experimental space to practice the routine in safe but realistic boundaries.