Abstract
Individuals and organizations have mindsets that reflect how they view themselves and the world around them. Some prominent authors have commented on this phenomenon and its relevance to business innovation. In this article, we refer to these mindsets as ‘mental space’ and define the latter as the way individuals and organizations perceive markets, products, industries, boundaries, strategies and capabilities.A common mental space is often shared inside an organization and among its stakeholders, concerning how they compete in their industry, strategic group, value chains and chosen markets. This collective ‘conventional wisdom’ often perpetuates itself and proves to be ineffective when major discontinuous changes take place in the business environment. Incumbent (industry-established) organizations face the challenge of developing or nurturing new mental space that enables faster innovation inside and across traditional boundaries, especially in an era increasingly characterized by the phenomenon of ‘open’ and ‘networked’ innovation.Despite the fact that recent business literature and prominent authors emphasize the importance of creativity and innovation for organizations in a turbulent environment, there seems to be lack of a clear definition and guidelines for cultivating new mental space for such activities and processes. By drawing from the extant strategic management literature and relevant business examples, this article suggests managerial levers for cultivating new mental space to drive organizational innovation to higher and appropriate levels for its proactive sustainability.
Highlights
Most organizations share a common mental set of beliefs, views or conventional wisdom about how they compete in their industry, strategic group, value chains and chosen markets
Changes in industry conditions, evolving customer preferences, and variety of competitors have radically changed the so-called ‘traditional’ business landscape, making it an unpredictable and uncertain competitive environment (Prahalad & Oosterveld, 1999; Hamel, 2000). Successful companies are those that are able to manage existing, established business models through incremental improvement and at the same time constantly experiment with new, innovative business models (Beinhocker, 1999; Markides, 1999; Pietersen, 2002)
The mental views of innovation and the enterprise have significantly changed over the last few decades, with current emphasis on open innovation and open enterprise
Summary
Individuals and organizations have mindsets that reflect how they view themselves and the world around them. A common mental space is often shared inside an organization and among its stakeholders, concerning how they compete in their industry, strategic group, value chains and chosen markets. This collective ‘conventional wisdom’ often perpetuates itself and proves to be ineffective when major discontinuous changes take place in the business environment. Despite the fact that recent business literature and prominent authors emphasize the importance of creativity and innovation for organizations in a turbulent environment, there seems to be lack of a clear definition and guidelines for cultivating new mental space for such activities and processes. By drawing from the extant strategic management literature and relevant business examples, this article suggests managerial levers for cultivating new mental space to drive organizational innovation to higher and appropriate levels for its proactive sustainability
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