Innovation in the making: performative dimensions of the innovation process

Abstract

A processual ontology has penetrated the understanding of many organizational phenomena, such as innovation. Contemporary considerations on innovation have focused on its development over time, as a journey taken by organizational actors leading to an open range of outcomes. Nonetheless, such perspectives do not fully capture the processual nature of innovation: they still rely on a vision of actors involved as faits acomplis. Along these lines, the paper offers an alternative way to look at an evolving phenomenon – innovation - in process terms. Our research enriches contemporary investigations on innovation by introducing the concepts of enrolment and posthumanist performativity in the analysis of innovation, and by empirically exploring the entanglements of matter of different kinds and their influence on the making of innovation. Such intra-activities are illustrated through the use of data derived from an ethnographic study in a pharmaceutical not for profit research centre