Discipline Boundaries in Innovation Studies: Operations Management and Allied Fields

Abstract

In this essay we summarize the state-of-the art of innovation studies shadowed by the daunting challenges this eclectic subject domain incurs as a result of discipline silo structures in most universities. Indeed, developments in technology and other external forces like competition and regulatory changes have pushed organizations towards development and adoption of new approaches particularly salient in Operations Management (OM). We show, however, that in the academic community, these discipline-based efforts have created an impediment to development of a strategic theory of innovation processes. We conclude with an upbeat and optimistic appraisal of possible ways forward and suggest a process to accelerate theory-building that might deal with the growing feeling among many scholars that many academic journals are becoming irrelevant. Examples from the current literature and reflections on the past 40 years of research in the field are liberally sampled. Although our essay views innovation through a bro...