6.1. The company microcosm: a determining role in the stage of problematization

The comparative analysis which I was able to exchange enables us to appreciate the very significance of the socio-organizational microcosm during the problematization stage, which is the ignition or the starting point for managerial staff. This microcosm may be defined as all players and the environment in which their interactions take place (Lawrence et al., 2002). This microcosm is the singular context, the proximal milieu or surroundings from which CI managers will make representations and express the problems to be resolved by CI. From this viewpoint, the microcosm or the Umwelt – environment (Von Uexküll, 1965) – of CI managers is an antecedent to problematization.

The microcosm returns to the sphere of the company or the group and integrates a social and organizational dimension. We mention here the notion of the institutional sphere (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983) being all organizations that belong to the same area of institutional life. Within academic publications, this notion instead refers to the organizational dimension. However, the social dimension is also significant. The group or the company is made up of men and women (the players) and the structures that underpin social relationships between players, embodied within a given organization. Several works have stressed the significance of the human dimension within organizations (Oliver, 1991; Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006; Mamman, 2009; Ansari et al., 2010).

Within our analysis, on several occasions I have referred to the notion of the milieu or Umwelt with reference to the microcosm, in other words the company within its socio-organizational dimension. This microcosm is only itself a subset of the distal environment with which it is organized. This distal environment refers to the environment of the business or group, in other words what I am referring to as the “corporate context”.

Some details are essential here for the more curious reader. The proximal environment corresponds to how the environment is intentionally laid out by those CI managers in view of determined learning (the question of “how should this be done?”). The nature of this learning depends on several factors such as representations by CI managers, their hypothetical systems around players’ needs and how they understand the power issues, not forgetting the cultural matrices that lie at the origin of the main operating modes. For its part, the distal environment – Von Uexküll speaks of Umgebung (“environs” in English) – refers to all environmental data (political, normative, economic, cultural, symbolic, geographical and all other factors) which, distant to the proximal environment, will influence the process of both learning and building knowledge actionable by CI managers. This sphere of indirect influences is far from fixed and must always be understood within the context of space and time. Although the process of knowledge-building undertaken by CI managers has its origin in past and present situations, the expected objectives project players into environments, for which the question is to anticipate the configuration. In other words, the distal environment is not a setting in which the learning process in question takes place. It is however one of its identifiable components through the multi-dimensional issues, forms of intentionality and demands which are specific to such a process.

Within our analysis of CIs, the problematization stage depends on the unique nature that the coupling between the elements of the proximal and distal environment assumes and how this enumeration is “enacted” by CI managers and their teams. “Enaction” (Varela et al., 1993) is how a subject-player (the action enabling the composition and deployment of resources within a given situation) succeeds in guiding their actions within a given local situation. Within this context, all knowledge is knowledge both in action and in a given situation, which argues in favor of learning by doing and/or problem-based learning. In every case, this process of learning has a performative nature in the sense that it targets a given change. Again, in every case, CI managers will act in an opportunistic manner, so as to build the history of their CI based on hard facts or soft facts.

During my four years of research, having had the opportunity to cross paths with the same CI players on many occasions, I realized that the stage of “problematization” is not set in stone and can, on the contrary, enrich new elements that the CI managers will mobilize as part of their managerial views and which will be followed by concrete actions that refer to forms of institutional work (Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006), translation (Callon, 1986; Latour, 1994) and adaptation (Mamman, 2009; Ansari et al., 2010).

In the hope of forming an explicit model, it appears essential to understand the links and coherency between the concept of institutional work, that of translation and that of adaptation. The initial concept has its roots in institutional and organizational thinking and these two latter concepts are fundamental for research into management innovation (MI). All of these concepts appeared to me to provide a social and organizational interpretation of the adoption phenomenon. Relying on all of the analyses which I conducted, I propose to carry out a reinterpretation of the links between institutional work, translation relating thereto and adaptation, with the objective of describing this adoption model.

To achieve this, I systematically asked myself three points for each of these three concepts. What is it? What is its purpose? How does it work?

6.2. Institutional work: a group of systems and practices

Institutional work is a set of systems and practices that aim to create, maintain or destroy institutions. Comparative analysis of cases observed led to the appearance of two different systems of institutional work: a political work and a normative work. These two systems of institutional work themselves refer to four types of managerial practices: “managerial curation”, “player motivation“, “the construction of identical networks” and “the change in standards” for innovation production.

Managerial curation refers to practices through which managers of the incubation mechanism will select fragments of the CEO’s managerial interactions – or management representatives who they will then use to argue in favor of their mechanisms. Through these practices, it is a matter of legitimizing the launch of corporate incubation mechanisms, and to negotiate their respective purposes. However, to do this, it is necessary to motivate the various players, which remains a tricky balancing act.

As I noted throughout my analyses, motivating actors involves being able, as a bare minimum, to understand their constraints and respective interests. Practices aiming to motivate players involves an excellent knowledge of business, that is to say, the corporate environment in general (the distal environment), but equally the environment and local cultures or skills unique to various entities in the institutional field (R&D, business units and other such entities). These are all vital elements, as someone working within a business or who aspires to work in such a business understands. Moreover, it is for this reason you remain within your business or you aspire to join another one.

Although the practices which motivate players are significant, it is advisable to create a knock-on effect and to give rise to the greatest membership numbers or at least the membership of all relevant players within the institutional field. De facto, the constitution of identity networks becomes a necessity. CI managers need allies and supporters who will serve as a reflector and an intermediary within the institution. These allies or supports thus become co-owners of the approach taken by CI managers. The constitution of identity networks stresses the social dimension of institutional work. These identity networks play a key role in the change in production innovation standards. Allies or supporters of incubation mechanisms all represent emissaries or spokespeople who will contribute to changing CI innovation production standards. CIs are, in every instance, instruments for open innovation.

All of these practices (“managerial curation”, “player motivation”, “the construction of identity networks” and “the change in standards”) constitute opportunities to change one intelligible term – a product of the “problematization” stage – into another intelligible term to enable the understanding of the initial terms by third parties (Amblard et al., 1996). In other words, these practices illustrate the translation involved and this is the reason why I frequently speak of translation positioned in the sense that it is happening now. It revolves around a situation that is geographical, temporal and consequently contextual.

6.3. Translation, a driver for institutional work

Institutional work is a means of enabling CI managers to “translate” their mechanisms. Translation is, from this point of view, the driver for institutional work, and feeds the negotiations between the various parties. It is carried out via practices that create links between the activities and heterogeneous players, statements and issues. The CI manager and his/her team together constitute the translator, who weaves and feeds this relational fabric. Some speak of an intermediary or even a mediator. I believe that each of these two terms taken separately does not sufficiently reflect the CI manager’s requirements. Indeed, an intermediary puts two people in contact whom he/she knows, and whom he/she believes have things to say or do together. Any given mediator, who may or may not know the people, has an activity dedicated to aligning the parties. In my view, the translator takes these two approaches. He/she knows both parties, thinks that they have something to manufacture together and makes the effort to align them. In short, the translator is an intermediary mediator. This is a far more powerful notion than that of either single intermediation or single mediation.

The register of practices implemented as part of the institutional work produced at a given moment in time serves, in a way, as a kind of dictionary enabling negotiation of a given direction of the incubation mechanism. As a translator, capitalizing on the core issue (the problematization phase), the manager of the given mechanism must choose how to effect it, that is to say, choose the relevant levers. Comparative analyses enable the identification of the nature of these levers and in particular the FCEs (Field Configuration Events) (Meyer et al., 2005; Lampel and Meyer, 2008; Hardy and Maguire, 2010) organized by CI managers (Demo Days, start-up selection committees, calls for thematic projects, fab labs and prototyping workshops, and other aspects). Other levers are known in field publications simply as hard facts or soft facts (Latour, 1994). In substance, and as a reminder, it is a question of concrete or abstract terms which, on the one hand, do not have any possible interpretation and, on the other hand, remain intentionally flawed. These levers enable the CI field to be defined within the given institution and are therefore the tools at the disposal of the translator, that is to say the CI manager, to produce the institutional work and, in particular, to adapt its incubation mechanism. Whether these tools are used to produce a political and/or a normative work, they are generally deployed by CI managers with the intention of converting the proto-institution’s CI into an institution. It is the CI’s performance that is of interest to the relevant manager. In addition and because this change process falls within the given duration, CI managers have no choice other than to multiply their recourse to certain tools to adapt their mechanism and establish the process.

Many CI managers organize “themed seasons”, which provide opportunities to mobilize these tools. Each new opportunity for using these tools enables us to strengthen the ties between the activities and players, to reconcile player points of view, converge interests and reconcile the issues.

Translation is also an effect of institutional work, and can also be inductive of institutional work. In this context, each new season enables learning and provision of the response elements for the question “how should this be done?”, that is to say, how should we adapt the incubation mechanism to the company? Translation occurs before the institutional work and the latter, once started, feeds the translation in return. This is the reason why I consider translation as a driver for knowledge accumulation (and accumulation of energy) for institutional work. In order to be more precise, we may almost speak of a dynamo motor.

6.4. Adaptation or translation in situ

Works on managerial adaptation indicate that the CI manager can handle characteristics unique to the given CI structure. The analysis of our cases reveals that CI managers can play with three key structural characteristics to facilitate the adaptation of their mechanisms: functional ambiguity in all its forms (purposes, objectives and type), relative advantages and lastly complexity, whether it is rational or irrational.

Functional ambiguity, just like the relative advantages or even complexity, do not only depend on the OI manager’s plan of action. The responsibilities and the assets that the company will or will not decide to make available to the OI manager will give a lesser or greater latitude to the latter to “handle” such characteristics.

CI managers use the levers that I have previously mentioned (FCEs, hard facts and soft facts), as means of manipulating structural characteristics. This is a point that we entirely grasp when we hear the views of the various CI managers questioned, and it will certainly make you smile when reading the various cases in the following chapters. “Handling” these characteristics will authorize the CI manager of the mechanism to, in the end, play with the field of given players being sought so as to feed the given microcosm, the type of the tasks to accomplish and the useful structure to conduct its purpose efficiently. The mechanism can then adapt itself to the circumstances. This adaptation in real time is a translation, which we describe as in situ (situated translation). Everything happens as if the manipulation of the three characteristics mentioned enables the mechanism to “translate in situ”, that is to say, to adapt so as to lead institutional work successfully.

Let us now try to formalize the links between institutional work, translation and adaptation. The task is far from being simple, as my ambition is to show you, through illustration, the entire global mechanism.

6.5. Conceptual links

It is a matter of enabling dialog in an image first of institutional work, a concept with a structural organizational approach; then translation, a concept with a social structural approach; and lastly, adaptation, a concept enabling us to locate actions within their given contexts.

The three theoretical concepts are interwoven and they appear to be, already able to forge this image of CI adoption. As a reminder, globally I prefer to combine these three concepts and encapsulate them within the notion of managerial work. Why? Certainly for readers’ ease of understanding, but also and especially because they take on board the dimensions which I am confident are as important as each other in analyzing the organizational phenomena – social and organization-based aspects – which are so often dealt with separately within academic works (and in the real world). However, managerial work is what the CI manager does from day to day to make this new structure work, and this occurs within an organization that is comprised of real people, each of whom has their own unique story which influences their perceptions.

What we must realize is that a new structure, when it is introduced, responds by its very existence to the wishes of the organization to resolve the well-defined problem (problematization) based on various different criteria relative to what we are seeking to resolve. In the case of CI, it is essentially a matter of reinventing the innovation fabric. The effort involved in managing a new structure is always to channel the latter from a status of proto-institution, that is to say an aspiring structure, to simply an institutional status that is conclusively nothing more and nothing less, that is to say fully accepted by the general organization (structures + individuals) of the company. The new structure consequently has the obligation to find its place within the given surroundings, which have long been established. It is necessary for it to adapt, hence the concept of adaptation, which thus becomes fundamental.

In a way, I am putting forward a systemic view of the relevant processes. It is encapsulated within the words “managerial work”. The elements within this system (structures + individuals) interact with each other and with the new structure until an equilibrium is found. I speak of equilibrium, but you will notice that I do not state whether or not this equilibrium is a performance vector or not. That is a point for another discussion. In terms of our subject, the capacity that the CI manager has to manipulate the characteristics of the latter by using various subterfuges or levers (hard facts, soft facts or even field configuration events in the sphere) is essential.

This representation is a conceptual model for the adoption of CI. It is in a way the internal theoretical mechanics of the “CI Trojan horse”. To succeed with the latter, I mention that my thinking falls within a perspective where I favor the existence of situations to allow themes and concepts to emerge. It is a significant point to recall, as I consider that the reality is in a way an intellectual construct. It is by basing it on a qualitative methodology studying multiple cases and a comparative analysis, that I showed conceptual categories from my empirical base. These conceptual categories have been compared to theoretical concepts stemming from publications on managerial innovation, open innovation and institutionalism. I have thus established a dialog between theory and practice, as a means to develop my analytical grid for CI adoption dynamics, which I have formalized within the above conceptual model.

However, this conceptual model is far from being realized in concrete terms from the CI adoption phenomena within large groups. It shows a composite group of linked concepts, but does not constitute an operational model reflecting reality on the ground, that is to say a model activated by a manager to force the adoption of its OI structure. This is a commitment, on my part, that I shared with you at the very beginning of this book: to remain in the field, even though I am resorting to theories which I am seeking to explain in a simple manner. I might add, though, that the model therefore demands refinement from a managerial point of view. I will try, starting from this conceptual representation, to give an interpretation of what is really happening from a more managerial viewpoint.

I perceive a sort of nonlinear hierarchy between different stages of the adoption process. These different stages are the following: “the expression of a problem”, “the capitalization of levers” and “the manipulation of characteristics”, hoping to reach the “adoption” phase. We will go deeper into the nonlinear nature of these various stages below.

6.6. The institutional adoption pyramid

To develop our operational model, we have taken into account two dimensions. The first dimension refers to different stages of the adoption process and the second to the effect of experience, that is to say, learning.

In my approach, it is through an “adoption loop”, upon which the institutionalization of incubation structures studied hinges. This conception of institutional adoption echoes the current positions taken by publications in the field (Zbaracki, 1998; Scozzi et al., 2005). These consider that the development of managerial innovation (MI) rests upon a learning process. Indeed, far from being a linear process, the process of institutional adoption is an iterative process comprising successive experiences through which CI managers negotiate a shared common direction. Moreover, the stages of this process can overlap, even become confused. Furthermore, this conception of the institutional adoption process is modeled upon the positions of significant authors, which I have taken up (Callon, 1986; Latour, 1994; Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006; Ansari et al., 2010). Such positions emphasize the eminently dynamic character of the process of institutionalization. This small remark, far from being anecdotal, indicates that it is important for research, in whatever field, to remain coherent in relation to the authors and researchers from which it draws inspiration.

The practices implemented by CI managers are taking part in this dynamic conception of institutionalization in progress, in particular through the various FCEs. Moreover, these FCEs are all opportunities for learning by doing or problem-based learning, and, as I hope to have convinced you, for negotiating a shared common direction.

Our model thus intends to show not only the various stages that lead to the adoption, but also the nonlinear nature of this adoption process. To design this model, I formed, starting from my analysis, the notion of “proto-adoption”, so as to show a transitory state of the adoption process. This transitory state echoes the notion of proto-institution, which embodies the institutionalization in progress. The conception of the adoption process also integrates a cognitive dimension, which acknowledges that the problematization of the situation can be enriched over the course of time via learning mechanisms. The experience accumulated by CI managers enables them to broaden their knowledge base, reinvent practices and improve their mastery of the relevant tools. Experience becomes the means to enrich the translator’s dictionary for the given adoption. It rarely takes the same form and can evolve to accompany the transition from proto-institution to institution.

The following enables us to illustrate our conception of the institutional adoption process.

Through this succession of pyramids, I intend to produce both a hierarchy of the various stages of the adoption process, from the possible overlaps between stages, and the nonlinear nature of the process.

Within this model, which is meant to be operational, problematization is the basis of the process. The use of certain tools such as FCEs can intervene at various times (within space–time) during the process. Manipulating the characteristics of the structure is also an approach which is produced in line with current business trends. From its launch to its institutionalization, the mechanism will be a proto-institution, that is to say, an aspiring institution. This marks its progress from a “proto-adoption” to an adoption.

The number of cycles to complete to go from proto-institution to institution is not known in advance, and it depends on the conditions unique to each group and in particular the resources which the group intends to allocate to the CI, not forgetting the given manager profile. The appetite and culture of the group as regards innovation and in particular OI is also an essential parameter that is likely to influence the duration of the adoption process. According to the situation from which we start (the high propensity for OI or, on the contrary, a culture of closed innovation), the process of adoption will not necessitate the same efforts and will thus take more or less time.