Overview

Our most pressing societal problems such as enhancing health care, developing alternate energy, revitalizing cities, and advancing the economy are complex innovation systems. Leveraging the enormous potential of sciences and technologies into better resolutions for these complex challenges requires a transformation in the social technologies we use to tap this potential. The thesis of this book is that we can grapple with complex innovation systems only by taking advantage of emergence. This book creates a theoretical framework of three new social technologies for taking advantage of emergence in infrastructures of complex innovation systems. The central social technology is abduction, the logic of discovery, for figuring out solutions to complex problems. Abductive reasoning differs significantly from deductive confirmation and simple rationality. The book details three abductive learning routines that enable innovators to grab up noisy and fragmented information, synthesize it into hypothesized configurations that capture the inherent ambiguity, evaluate these configurations by exploring consequences and contingencies, and reframe to accumulate the learning. The second social technology divides the infrastructure into four distinct but entangled subsystems of interpersonal action: the project, knowledge system, strategic, and institutional subsystems. Each subsystem is a vast multi-organizational network that must address its distinct problem if the infrastructure overall is to productively innovate. The author shows how cycling through abductive learning routines overcomes problems in each subsystem that conventional approaches cannot deal with. The third social technology is a new way of organizing based on heterarchy, not hierarchy, with roles and relations defined through heedful interrelating.

Full Product Details

Author:   Deborah Dougherty (Professor of Management and Global Business Department, Professor of Management and Global Business Department, Rutgers Business School, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press
Imprint:   Oxford University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 14.20cm , Height: 1.50cm , Length: 22.30cm
Weight:   0.332kg
ISBN:  

9780198725299

ISBN 10:   0198725299
Pages:   174
Publication Date:   25 February 2016
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Undergraduate ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

1: It Takes an Infrastructure to Take Advantage of Emergence 2: 1. Abductive Reasoning as the Foundation for Taking Advantage of Emergence 3: 1. The Product Subsystem in the Infrastructure for Complex Innovation Systems: Navigating in the Labyrinth 4: 1. The Knowledge Subsystem in the Infrastructure for Taking Advantage of Emergence: Designing the Strategic Path for Drug Discovery by Integrating Sciences and Technologies 5: 1. The Strategic Management Subsystem in the Infrastructure for Taking Advantage of Emergence: Mustering the Staying Power to Persist and Learn 6: The Institutional Subsystem in the Infrastructure for Taking Advantage of Emergence: Creating the Collaborative Commons 7: 1. Integrating Subsystems into an Infrastructure for Taking Advantage of Emergence

Reviews

Professor Doughertys Taking Advantage of Emergence is an outstanding addition to the literature on innovation. It combines a highly innovative theoretical framework with rich empirical analysis of modern innovation. It is rare to find a book that combines academic insight with such a clear articulation of ideas that is presented in a way that can be readily accessed by non-academics. The book is both rich and fascinating, and also an enjoyable read. Professor Dougherty avoids simplistic easy answers, but offers something much more valuable a framework for understanding how innovation emerges and how that emergence can be managed. I know of no other book that provides such an overview of the cutting edge of our field. Paul Nightingale, Professor of Strategy, University of Sussex In this book, Deborah Dougherty offers a deeply pragmatic roadmap for addressing our most challenging social and technical problems through new modes of thinking and organizing. Complexity often seems like a curse, because it foils traditional methods of understanding. Through her extensive fieldwork and intensive scholarship, Dougherty has found an alternative: by enabling emergence, we enable discovery, and discovery provides the way forward. Brian T. Pentland, Eli Broad College of Business, Michigan State University This book is a brilliant epitome of what Debra Doughertys scholarship is best known: empirical richness and conceptual depth. Generating new knowledge in complex innovation systems, such as the making of new drugs, is hugely important both practically and theoretically. Doughertys sophisticated research not only sheds light on complex innovation but gives us a sophisticated vocabulary to better understand it. Her emphasis on the emergent character of innovation, on collective learning, and on abductive reasoning, to mention a few concepts, illuminates her rich empirical material. She writes for both scholars and practitioners, and this gives the book a freshness which is not always discernible in purely scholastic texts. Haridimos Tsoukas, The Columbia Ship Management Professor of Strategic Management, University of Cyprus and Distinguished Research Environment Professor of Organization Studies, Warwick Business School

This book is a brilliant epitome of what Debra Doughertys scholarship is best known: empirical richness and conceptual depth. Generating new knowledge in complex innovation systems, such as the making of new drugs, is hugely important both practically and theoretically. Doughertys sophisticated research not only sheds light on complex innovation but gives us a sophisticated vocabulary to better understand it. Her emphasis on the emergent character of innovation, on collective learning, and on abductive reasoning, to mention a few concepts, illuminates her rich empirical material. She writes for both scholars and practitioners, and this gives the book a freshness which is not always discernible in purely scholastic texts. * Haridimos Tsoukas, The Columbia Ship Management Professor of Strategic Management, University of Cyprus * In this book, Deborah Dougherty offers a deeply pragmatic roadmap for addressing our most challenging social and technical problems through new modes of thinking and organizing. Complexity often seems like a curse, because it foils traditional methods of understanding. Through her extensive fieldwork and intensive scholarship, Dougherty has found an alternative: by enabling emergence, we enable discovery, and discovery provides the way forward. * Brian T. Pentland, Eli Broad College of Business, Michigan State University * Professor Dougherty's Taking Advantage of Emergence is an outstanding addition to the literature on innovation. It combines a highly innovative theoretical framework with rich empirical analysis of modern innovation. It is rare to find a book that combines academic insight with such a clear articulation of ideas that is presented in a way that can be readily accessed by non-academics. The book is both rich and fascinating, and also an enjoyable read. Professor Dougherty avoids simplistic easy answers, but offers something much more valuable a framework for understanding how innovation emerges and how that emergence can be managed. I know of no other book that provides such an overview of the cutting edge of our field. * Paul Nightingale, Professor of Strategy, University of Sussex *

Professor Dougherty's Taking Advantage of Emergence is an outstanding addition to the literature on innovation. It combines a highly innovative theoretical framework with rich empirical analysis of modern innovation. It is rare to find a book that combines academic insight with such a clear articulation of ideas that is presented in a way that can be readily accessed by non-academics. The book is both rich and fascinating, and also an enjoyable read. Professor Dougherty avoids simplistic easy answers, but offers something much more valuable a framework for understanding how innovation emerges and how that emergence can be managed. I know of no other book that provides such an overview of the cutting edge of our field. * Paul Nightingale, Professor of Strategy, University of Sussex * In this book, Deborah Dougherty offers a deeply pragmatic roadmap for addressing our most challenging social and technical problems through new modes of thinking and organizing. Complexity often seems like a curse, because it foils traditional methods of understanding. Through her extensive fieldwork and intensive scholarship, Dougherty has found an alternative: by enabling emergence, we enable discovery, and discovery provides the way forward. * Brian T. Pentland, Eli Broad College of Business, Michigan State University * This book is a brilliant epitome of what Debra Doughertys scholarship is best known: empirical richness and conceptual depth. Generating new knowledge in complex innovation systems, such as the making of new drugs, is hugely important both practically and theoretically. Doughertys sophisticated research not only sheds light on complex innovation but gives us a sophisticated vocabulary to better understand it. Her emphasis on the emergent character of innovation, on collective learning, and on abductive reasoning, to mention a few concepts, illuminates her rich empirical material. She writes for both scholars and practitioners, and this gives the book a freshness which is not always discernible in purely scholastic texts. * Haridimos Tsoukas, The Columbia Ship Management Professor of Strategic Management, University of Cyprus *

Author Information

Deborah Dougherty earned her PhD from the Sloan School of Management, M.I.T., and taught at Wharton (University of Pennsylvania) and McGill University prior to joining Rutgers University. Her current research focuses on complex innovation challenges, science-based innovation, and organizing for innovation. She has published more than 60 journal articles, book chapters, and essays, with more in the pipeline. She was elected Chair of the Technology and Innovation Division of the Academy of Management, served as Senior Editor for Organization Science for 7 years, and served or is now serving on the editorial boards of six other major academic journals.

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