Measuring the generative power of an organisational routine with design theories: the case of design thinking in a large firm

International audienceThis article studies how a large firm uses Design Thinking (DT) as a core process in specific design and development team whose mission is to bridge the gap between unidentified market needs and business units research & development effort. We analyse two cases where new concepts were developed and promoted to business units for implementation by following DT methodology. Our study shows that the DT routine reveals some generative power to explore the user perspective, yet it appears uncontrolled when it comes to generate a wider variety of ideas and knowledge challenging the design ecosystem ontology omitted and made invariant through user-focus hence it faces difficulties to engage with stakeholders and other organisational routines for an enhanced creativity and organisational change

Generative action and preference reversal in exploratory project management

Organisations trying to innovate, despite being naturally encouraged to use project management and associated rational theories of choice, will necessarily experiment in some way or another due to the high levels of uncertainty and the unknown to be discovered. Exploratory project management may face situations requiring a constant reconfiguration of beliefs and hypotheses as a reaction to external factors. In this paper, we propose to discuss the existence of a generative rationality breaking away from classical decision theory by deliberately reversing preferences and designing decisions

Innover pour décider : Modéliser et expérimenter l'ambidextrie décisionnelle pour gérer les métabolismes de l'organisation innovante

It is now common knowledge to develop an ambidextrous organization in a firm to guarantee a competitive advantage in its environment. Such perspective is rooted in James March’s model (1991) whose purpose is to sustain organizational learning through adaptive mechanisms between agents. This model anchored in the tradition of problem-solving offers a behavioural approach coping with biases and heuristics of bounded rationality. In contrast, with literature models studying the balance between exploration and exploitation activities (ambidexterity), we demonstrate how exploration can be more generative if it uses exploitation constraints as prior knowledge to generate concepts. These rely on positively conditioning them by decision-making parameters contributing to exploitation. New decision situations are designed instead of traditionally selecting explorations. This model - decisional ambidexterity-allows building up projects capable of exploring conditions overcoming limitations and performances of exploitation. A collaborative research conducted at Zodiac Aerospace allowed revealing such new model. It extends organizational ambidexterity into the unknown, more adapted to innovation management & governance, whilst precising how to drive organization metabolisms inducing change among participating organizations in a conglomerate of SMEs.Il est devenu courant de développer une organisation ambidextre dans une entreprise pour garantir un avantage compétitif dans son environnement. Cette perspective trouve ses racines dans le modèle de James March (1991) ayant la vocation de soutenir l'apprentissage organisationnel par des mécanismes adaptatifs entre agents. Ce modèle ancré dans la tradition du problem-solving propose une approche comportementaliste palliant les biais et heuristiques de la rationalité limitée. Par opposition avec les modèles de la littérature étudiant l’équilibrage entre les activités d’exploration et d’exploitation (ambidextrie), nous démontrons que l’exploration peut être plus générative si elle utilise les contraintes d’exploitation comme connaissances préalables à la génération de concepts. Ceux-là reposent sur un conditionnement positif par les paramètres des processus décisionnels contribuant à l’exploitation. De nouvelles situations décisionnelles sont ainsi conçues plutôt que de se contenter d’une traditionnelle sélection des explorations. Ce modèle –ambidextrie décisionnelle – permet de réaliser des projets capables d’explorer des conditions dépassant les limites et performances de l’exploitation. Une recherche intervention chez Zodiac Aerospace permet de rendre compte de ce nouveau modèle. Il étend ainsi la notion d’ambidextrie organisationnelle dans l’inconnu, plus adaptée au management et gouvernance de l’innovation, tout en précisant la gestion des métabolismes organisationnels nécessaires aux changements des organisations dans un conglomérat de PMEs

Innovate to decide : Modelling and experimenting decisional ambidexterity to manage the metabolisms of the innovative organization

Il est devenu courant de développer une organisation ambidextre dans une entreprise pour garantir un avantage compétitif dans son environnement. Cette perspective trouve ses racines dans le modèle de James March (1991) ayant la vocation de soutenir l'apprentissage organisationnel par des mécanismes adaptatifs entre agents. Ce modèle ancré dans la tradition du problem-solving propose une approche comportementaliste palliant les biais et heuristiques de la rationalité limitée. Par opposition avec les modèles de la littérature étudiant l’équilibrage entre les activités d’exploration et d’exploitation (ambidextrie), nous démontrons que l’exploration peut être plus générative si elle utilise les contraintes d’exploitation comme connaissances préalables à la génération de concepts. Ceux-là reposent sur un conditionnement positif par les paramètres des processus décisionnels contribuant à l’exploitation. De nouvelles situations décisionnelles sont ainsi conçues plutôt que de se contenter d’une traditionnelle sélection des explorations. Ce modèle –ambidextrie décisionnelle – permet de réaliser des projets capables d’explorer des conditions dépassant les limites et performances de l’exploitation. Une recherche intervention chez Zodiac Aerospace permet de rendre compte de ce nouveau modèle. Il étend ainsi la notion d’ambidextrie organisationnelle dans l’inconnu, plus adaptée au management et gouvernance de l’innovation, tout en précisant la gestion des métabolismes organisationnels nécessaires aux changements des organisations dans un conglomérat de PMEs.It is now common knowledge to develop an ambidextrous organization in a firm to guarantee a competitive advantage in its environment. Such perspective is rooted in James March’s model (1991) whose purpose is to sustain organizational learning through adaptive mechanisms between agents. This model anchored in the tradition of problem-solving offers a behavioural approach coping with biases and heuristics of bounded rationality. In contrast, with literature models studying the balance between exploration and exploitation activities (ambidexterity), we demonstrate how exploration can be more generative if it uses exploitation constraints as prior knowledge to generate concepts. These rely on positively conditioning them by decision-making parameters contributing to exploitation. New decision situations are designed instead of traditionally selecting explorations. This model - decisional ambidexterity-allows building up projects capable of exploring conditions overcoming limitations and performances of exploitation. A collaborative research conducted at Zodiac Aerospace allowed revealing such new model. It extends organizational ambidexterity into the unknown, more adapted to innovation management & governance, whilst precising how to drive organization metabolisms inducing change among participating organizations in a conglomerate of SMEs

Can organisational ambidexterity kill innovation? A case for non-expected utility decision making

International audienceThe academic construction of ambidexterity articulated around notions such as exploration, exploitation (J. March 1991) has been flourishing over the years with a strong background in organisational theory to explain levels of performance and innovation. However, they have also made a call for in-depth studies to understand managerial capabilities such as decision-making (Birkinshaw & Gupta 2013; O’Reilly & Tushman 2013; Benner & Tushman 2015) supporting the tension of competing objectives. In this paper, we show that organisational ambidexterity can kill innovation as the underlying decision theories are not fully supporting the nature of decision required in regimes such as contextual ambidexterity (Gibson & Birkinshaw 2004). Two case studies from the aircraft cabin equipment industry are presented and analysed at the project management level with descriptors from organisational ambidexterity and decision-making. We propose to consider unconventional decision theories, taking into account non-expected utilities such as potential regret of imagined prospects, as a means to support management tools enabling ambidexterity at the decisional and contextual levels. First, we show that common decision models based on expected utility encoded in management tools mobilised for contextual ambidexterity can fail to support innovation. Second, we propose that a non-expected utility, such as potential regret of imagined prospects, serves the management of competing exploration/exploitation objectives. Third, the case studies help contouring a management tool extending observed attempts to sustain or extend contextual ambidexterity through unconventional decision-making

Decision design and re-ordering preferences: the case of an exploration project in a large firm

International audienceDecision theory has been long applied to project management for risk and uncertainty reduction. Among the foundations, the manager is considered following axioms describing his rationality the most prominent ones being transitivity and independence. The order in preferences is not supposed be reversed yet unknowns events of nature, seen as exogenous, may perturb our understanding of the given situation and may require designing new decisions going against decision theories, hence increasing uncertainty. In this paper we show that in an innovation project management, traditional decision making is not able to grasp expansion and generativity phenomena as a manager senses the unknown and endogenises it. To highlight this phenomenon we use Bayesian Nets with Wald's foundations to sense the reordering preferences in an industrial case and the benefits of designing one's playground and being intransitive. The purpose to contribute to the idea theories studying generative processes (design theory) by opposition to optimisation (decision theory) can help extend the underlying logics of innovation management and untangle the tipping point, the necessity to explore/exploit

Étude 'Innovation et recherche dans la mode et le luxe'- Institut Carnot-CARATS avec le soutien du DÉFI

Restitution des ateliers de conception innovante organisés entre professionnels de la filière industrielle mode & luxe et scientifiques sur les enjeux contemporains du secteu

Étude 'Innovation et recherche dans la mode et le luxe'- Institut Carnot-CARATS avec le soutien du DÉFI

Restitution des ateliers de conception innovante organisés entre professionnels de la filière industrielle mode & luxe et scientifiques sur les enjeux contemporains du secteu

SUMO 2016 – Traffic, Mobility, and Logistics

Dear reader, You are holding in your hands a volume of the series „Reports of the DLR-Institute of Transportation Systems“. We are publishing in this series fascinating, scientific topics from the Institute of Trans- portation Systems of the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V. – DLR) and from his environment. We are providing libraries with a part of the circulation. Outstanding scientific contributions and dissertations are here published as well as projects reports and proceedings of conferences in our house with different contributors from science, economy and politics. With this series we are pursuing the objective to enable a broad access to scientific works and results. We are using the series as well as to promote practically young researchers by the publication of the dissertation of our staff and external doctoral candidates, too. Publications are important milestones on the academic career path. With the series „Reports of the DLR-Institute of Transportation Systems / Berichte aus dem DLR-Institut für Verkehrssystemtechnik“ we are widening the spectrum of possible publications with a building block. Beyond that we understand the communication of our scientific fields of research as a contribution to the national and international research landscape in the fields of automotive, railway systems and traffic management. With this volume we publish the proceedings of the SUMO Conference 2016 which was held from 23rd to 25th May 2016 with a focus on traffic, mobility, and logistics. SUMO is an open source tool for traffic simulation that provides a wide range of traffic planning and simulation functionalities.The conference proceedings offer an overview of the applicability of the SUMO tool suite as well as its universal extensibility due to the availability of the source code. The major topic of this fourth edition of the SUMO conference are the different facets of moving objects occurring as personal mobility and freight delivery as well as communicating networks of intelligent vehicles. Several articles cover heterogeneous traffic networks, junction control and new traffic model extensions to the simulation. Subsequent specialized issues such as disaster management aspects and applying agile development techniques to scenario building are targeted as well. At the conference the international user community exchanged their experiences in using SUMO. With this volume we provide an insight to these experiences as inspiration for further projects with the SUMO suite