How novelty is generated: cognitive processes in organization

Abstract

This thesis is based on three papers with the aim to investigating how novelty emerges in organizational context, with a focus on cognitive mechanisms. Specifically, this work intends to provide theoretical contribution and empirical evidence on how a concept emerges, by explaining the mechanisms of generating novel concepts, and by determining the role of metaphors in these processes. The first article analyses how novelty is carried out by a new concept lay at the heart of different types of radical innovations, such as product, process or business model. The paper investigates the generation of novelty as a process of conceptual innovation that leads to generate a new business model. In studying conceptual innovation, we depart from research that has been conceiving it as just a stage of a new product development project, claiming that conceptual innovation is an inner dimension of any novelty generation process. Through the case study of The Huffington Post over six years since its inception, we deepen the research on what a conceptual innovation is and what are its mechanisms to generate a new business model. We show how THP brought into the newspaper sector a truly new business model of online journal, that is an original and creative conceptual combination of newspaper and blog. With our research we contribute theoretically to the cognitive perspective on innovation and provide original evidence of the salient features of the conceptual innovation and its dynamics at the basis of business model. The second paper explores novelty from a language perspective, that is the generation of metaphors. Despite in the last three decades, management literature has been investigating metaphor from different theoretical perspectives and methodological lenses, a critical analysis of this debate is still absent. While research on metaphors might be seen as a very specialised discussion among a few experts, leading management scholars have shown that metaphors are central to organizational life and they play a crucial role in understanding organizational problems like interpretation and framing or how individuals deal with complexity. My findings suggest that studies on metaphors have increasingly occupied a central stage in the literature of management, with 3,282 articles published in 679 different journals to which 5,770 scholars contributed. Moreover, several disciplines, such as cognitive science, cognitive, psychology, philosophy of science, and sociology have enriched the debate. A variety of theoretical perspectives have also tackled this topic with a large spectrum of themes analysed. I provide a comprehensive analysis of the contribution of studies on metaphors to management literature, identifying relations among different streams of research and showing what are the key ideas. With this study, I contribute to theoretically understanding of the debate around metaphor and providing novel research questions to investigate. Metaphors and analogies play a crucial role in strategic change and in framing critical events that are constantly faced by organizations, especially during innovation processes. This research explores in depth entrepreneurs’ own perspectives and cognition during innovation activities, providing deeper insights about how critical events are linguistically elaborated and transmitted by ex post narration. Relying on interviews to successful entrepreneurs, we discovered how metaphor is always created by referring to specific semantic domains that act as institutional categories during innovation processes (i.e. war, journey, religion). Then, metaphor is a valuable discursive resource that permits researchers to investigate the broader institutional environment in which entrepreneurs are embedded. This research contributes to the literature of innovation and entrepreneurship, providing empirical evidence about entrepreneurial cognitive mechanisms during innovation processes.