The Impact of Communication on Collaborative Innovation in Complex Business Environments

Change and innovation are essential aspects for organizations today, especially those operating in highly complex, dynamic, and changing environments. While innovation in the context of organizations has received a great deal of attention, communication as an innovative strategy has gained limited attention due to the increasing difficulties companies have in achieving collaboration. One reason could be that communication is often taken for granted, considering that most global organizations often use internal communication programs aimed at employees. In other words, organizations consider that they already communicate. Still, they do not do it to stimulate innovation, or in any case, not as the main focus, but rather to communicate to employees’ various programs, values, ambitions, or business objectives and to facilitate interaction to achieve these objectives. However, new evidence from research indicates that targeted communication approaches are effective in alleviating gaps between teams and realigning focus. This paper covers all important aspects of the recent existing scientific literature, and it uses key variables such as team dynamics, leadership communication, and technology integration as indices for the success of collaborative innovation. The research methodology is based on an explicative review of secondary data, synthesizing insights from recent studies to propose a conceptual framework for strategic communication. The paper also focuses on the changes and innovations practitioners introduce to identify their impact on innovation practices. The most important contribution of this study is the development of a new scalable framework that will integrate theoretical perspectives with oriented actionable strategies that will effectively close the literature gaps by demonstrating the importance of communication in driving collaborative innovation. Or why not? Maybe it will prove that communication is the only tool companies can use to stimulate interaction between employees or teams to stimulate innovative collaboration. This research provides academic and practical value by increasing the understanding between communication strategies and organizational development.