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Taking a critical look at major perspectives on innovation, this book suggests that innovation is not a designed functional activity of a firm or an intentional process through which firms anticipate changes in conditions. Jose Fonseca proposes that the concepts behind the innovation experiences cannot be traced to any particular time, space or individual, even if one person has figured prominently. The innovative ideas in the examples considered did not occur as a direct product of a purposeful search triggered by the perception of some problem to solve, nor did they result from a sequential process that was laid out in advance. Instead, innovative ideas were a product of streams of conversations that extended over long periods of time and were characterized by critical degrees of misunderstanding and redundancy. Fonseca's book presents innovation as new meaning potentially emerging in ongoing, every-day conversations. Drawing on the theory of complex responsive process, developed in the first two volumes of this series, Fonseca presents a particular way of understanding innovation. The experiences of innovation studied in this book suggest that innovations do not start with a match between a need to be satisfied and a set of competencies and tools purposefully brought together to meet the need. On the contrary, identification of need is a consequence of success, rather than a pre-condition. The innovations studied in this book (a selection of innovation experiences from Portugal are considered) were subject to constant and never ending redefinition.
Since it was first published 25 years ago, Open Boundaries has been recognized as a seminal work in leading Enterprise Complexity. The process of interaction and emergence introduced in this book, exposes the myth that enterprise complexity can be managed. It cannot. But it can and must be led. Written by the late Howard Sherman and Ron Schultz, Open Boundaries emerged out of years of seminars held in Santa Fe, New Mexico. These workshops attracted businesses and enterprises from around the world grappling with rapid change. The pace of that change had unceremoniously propelled them out of the industrial age, through the information age, and into a post information age of new and previously unimagined opportunities that were always just one step away. Leading the way to these adjacent opportunities is why the ideas in Open Boundaries continue to create a new future. They are as needed today as they were when they first shattered enterprise thinking. There is a good reason it, as well as the other books in the Re-Emerge collection, are classics. They are not about control and order, but a means of understanding and meeting the complexity encountered and leading it to a new and vital future.
In urgent response to the epidemic of crippling complexity affecting organizations around the world, Simplify Work reveals the common sources of this virus and outlines practical steps that can be taken to liberate innovation, productivity, and engagement. Complexity is like a vine that gradually grows and expands, wreaking havoc in organizations and individual lives. Growing complexity has traditionally been met with added structures, processes, committees and systems. Consequently, organizations often become a complicated mess, clouding strategic focus, slowing innovation and breeding complacency. It is no wonder that large organizations around the world are failing at an increasing rate and employee engagement levels have never been so low. Simplify Work reveals the typical drivers of complexity and provides a practical method for simplifying work. Inside, global management consultant Jesse Newton delivers a newfound clarity on the case for simplification and the steps organizations and individuals need to take to unleash its potential. He reveals the common drivers of debilitating complexity and provides a recipe for reducing and removing those things getting in the way of peak performance. Based on the research and experiences of a recognized organization effectiveness expert, Simplify Work leaves readers inspired and equipped to create a new liberating reality in both their organization and their life.
Business leaders are expected to be 'in control' of the situation in which their businesses find themselves. But how can organizational leaders and managers control matters entirely out of their hands; such as the next action a competitor takes, or the next law a government may pass? In this book, Philip Streatfield reflects on his own experience as a manager to explore the question: who, or what is 'in control' in an organization? Adopting the perspective of complex responsive processes developed in the first two volumes of this series, the author takes self-organization and emergence as central themes in thinking about life in organizations. He focuses on the tension between spontaneously forming patterns of conversation and intentional actions arguing that the order of organizations emerges through a combination of collective interaction and individual intentions. The argument is developed by considering the day-to-day experiences of life in a large pharmaceutical organization, SmithKline Beecham. In today's organization, managers find that they have to live with the paradox of being 'in control' and 'not in control' simultaneously. It is this capacity to live with paradox, and to continue to participate creatively in spite of 'not being in control', that constitutes effective management.
The authors present a new approach to leadership based on findings from complexity science. Integrating real case studies with rigorous research results, they explore the biggest challenges being faced in fast-paced organizations, and provide a host of concrete tools for leading during critical periods.
This volume discusses the challenge of dealing with complexity in entrepreneurship, innovation and technology research. Businesses as well as entire economies are increasingly being confronted by widespread complex systems. Fields such as entrepreneurship and innovation cannot ignore this reality, especially with their inherent links to diverse research fields and interdisciplinary methods. However, most methods that allow more detailed analyses of complex problems are either neglected in mainstream research or are, at best, still emerging. Against this backdrop, this book provides a forum for the discussion of emergent and neglected methods in the context of complexity in entrepreneurship, innovation and technology research, and also acts as an inspiration for academics across related disciplines to engage more in complexity research.
Focusing on the essential uncertainty of participating in evolving events as they happen, this book considers the creative possibilities of such participation from a complexity perspective.
The reality of everyday organizational life is that it is filled with uncertainty, contradictions and paradoxes. Yet leaders and managers are expected to act as though they can predict the future and bring about the impossible: that they can transform themselves and their colleagues, design different cultures, choose the values for their organization, be innovative, control conflict and have inspiring visions. Whilst managers will have had lots of experiences of being in charge, they probably realise that they are not always in control. So how might we frame a much more realistic account of what’s possible for managers to achieve? Many managers are implicitly aware of their messy reality, but they rarely spend much time reflecting on what it is that they are actually doing. Drawing on insights from the complexity sciences, process sociology and pragmatic philosophy, Chris Mowles engages directly with some principal contradictions of organizational life concerning innovation, culture change, conflict and leadership. Mowles argues that if managers proceed from the expectation that organizational life as inherently uncertain, and interactions between people are complex and often paradoxical, they start noticing different things and create possibilities for acting in different ways. Managing in Uncertainty will be of interest to practitioners, advanced students and researchers looking at management and organizational studies from a critical perspective.
Innovation is nowadays a question of life and death for many of the economies of the western world. Yet, due to our generally reductionist scientific paradigm, invention and innovation are rarely studied scientifically. Most work prefers to study its context and its consequences. As a result, we are as a society, lacking the scientific tools to understand, improve or otherwise impact on the processes of invention and innovation. This book delves deeply into that topic, taking the position that the complex systems approach, with its emphasis on ‘emergence’, is better suited than our traditional approach to the phenomenon. In a collection of very coherent papers, which are the result of an EU-funded four year international research team’s effort, it addresses various aspect of the topic from different disciplinary angles. One of the main emphases is the need, in the social sciences, to move away from neo-darwinist ‘population thinking’ to ‘organization thinking’ if we want to understand social evolution. Another main emphasis is on developing a generative approach to invention and innovation, looking in detail at the contexts within which invention and innovation occur, and how these contexts impact on the chances for success or failure. Throughout, the book is infused with interesting new insights, but also presents several well-elaborated case studies that connect the ideas with a substantive body of ‘real world’ information.
Providing a critique of the ways that complexity theory has been applied to understanding organizations, and outining a new direction, this book calls for a radical re-examination of management thinking.