Harnessing the Complexity of Innovation

The concept of innovation is hard to define and, consequently, difficult to put into practice. It is argued that the actual complexity of innovation is too much taken for granted. In this article the focus is on analyzing the very complexity of innovation, its dynamics and potential for practice. Innovation is taken as linked to creativity, by the processes of learning, thinking and knowing. Henceforth the complex dynamics of innovation is a time-related process. The ensemble of two partners and their interaction is the basic dynamic unit for innovation. Modeling this unit within the new framework of complexity shows innovation to be a (self-) generative kind of process, depending on the context with its conditions. These may be called “the conditions of possibility for innovation”. These conditions, which are closely linked to facilitating the quality of interaction and relationships between the partners in interaction, within a community of interaction, may be shown to unravel innovation as a nonlinear generative process with potential nonlinear effects over time. Innovation is shown to be a complex process at both the individual and the collective level. The complexity perspective taken here shows the new way of thinking in complexity about the complex nature of innovation. Organizing complexity is the key for generating potential nonlinear effects of learning, thinking and knowing as emergent effects, thriving on human interaction. So, innovation is thriving on complexity, which, in turn, is thriving on interaction within generative relationships in communities of interaction. To describe how complexity may be ‘at work’ in organizations, and to organize it in a more successful way, a different framing of complexity and a corresponding new language of complexity is urgently needed, to turn complexity into effective complexity within complex organizations.