Managing the Repertoire: Stories, Metaphors, Prototypes, and Concept Coherence in Product Innovation

Victor P. Seidel () and Siobhán O’Mahony ()
Additional contact information
Victor P. Seidel: Babson College, Wellesley, Massachusetts 02457; and Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138
Siobhán O’Mahony: Boston University School of Management, Boston, Massachusetts 02215

Organization Science, 2014, vol. 25, issue 3, 691-712

Abstract: Arecognized challenge in innovation scholarship is how to coordinate the efforts of many minds contributing to the design of a single artifact. Much research shows that product concept representations can help coordinate design tasks, but we know little about the practices that make representations more or less effective. We used an inductive approach to examine how six teams in three industries used concept representations when creating novel products. All six teams crafted three types of representations: stories, metaphors, and prototypes. However, merely using representations did not ensure a shared repertoire and concept coherence—a common understanding of desired product attributes. Teams that failed to consistently engage in three practices—(1) collective scrutiny of representations, (2) linking representations to design constraints, and (3) active editing of representations—produced concept disunity, with disparate understandings of desired product attributes. Teams that maintained concept coherence were better able to coordinate design tasks than teams that experienced concept disunity. Our research explains how the ultimate effect of concept representations on the coordination of innovation is contingent on the practices used to manage a repertoire of representations in use.

Keywords: coordination; innovation; design; representation; boundary object; product concept (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2013.0879 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ororsc:v:25:y:2014:i:3:p:691-712

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Organization Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().