An information processing approach for facilitating the fuzzy front end of breakthrough innovations

Abstract

The initial discussion of innovation has led to an appreciation of differences between incremental innovation and radical innovation. We contend that the processes for successfully managing radical and incremental innovation are different and further that managing incremental innovation might be detrimental to the management of radical innovation. As a way of bringing these differences into focus, we use the lens of an information processing approach to understanding the phenomena. The reason for this is that while the processes of innovation to date have been studied from a variety of perspectives, most of them are context bound. Information processing is largely context free, providing a theoretically parsimonious perspective applicable across contexts. Hence, the aim of this paper is to suggest the use of an information processing approach for comparing the management of radical and incremental innovation. Although innovation processes for both radical and incremental innovation may span many years and consist of multiple phases, in this paper we focus on differences in the early or idea generation phases, i.e. the fuzzy front end (Page and Stovall, 1994), between radical and breakthrough innovation. We discuss differences between incremental and radical or breakthrough innovation. Following that, stages of innovation are discussed and then the notions of information processing as applied to innovation are outlined. Results of a longitudinal study of breakthrough are presented along with implications for a model of information processing at the fuzzy front end of breakthrough innovations.