 Who drives the creation of a novel vision? The role of individual insights and the ability of “letting go”Paola Bellis, Roberto Verganti and Federico Paolo Zasa Journal of Business Research, 2025, vol. 186, issue C Abstract: This study investigates how novel product visions emerge as team members share and fuse their insights. Existing studies contrast the merits of two possible paths. On the one hand, a vision is mainly conceived by the creative lead, putting forward a direction and then buying-in ownership of the other team members. On the other hand, a vision emerges as a balanced collaborative effort where all team members contribute. Through the sensemaking theoretical lens, we expand this discussion by proposing that regardless of who the main driver of innovation is, what is important in vision creation is the individual’s ability of “letting go” of early insights, namely sense-breaking. We analyze the vision creation dynamics of 26 top management teams. We capture how the verbal descriptions of a vision change from individual insights to a shared concept. We show how “letting go” of earlier creations is as important as adding new ones. Keywords: Vision; Sensemaking; Innovation; Letting go; Front-end of innovation (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:186:y:2025:i:c:s0148296324004818 DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2024.114977 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Business Research is currently edited by A. G. Woodside More articles in Journal of Business Research from Elsevier |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.