Explaining the innovation dichotomy: the contexts, contents, conflicts, and compromises of innovation stories

5.1 Context, participants, and data

The target organisation of this study was a medium-sized Finnish international technology company whose business was the production of high-quality products based on top science and innovative technology. The target company employed around 300 people in different functions and was divided into different departments and teams. Personnel from three departments participated in this study: administration, product development, and production. These were chosen not only because they were key players in the company’s operations and in the goal of producing quality products but also because they were different in terms of the content of their work. Like most of the narrative studies in human sciences today (Riessman 2008), the data for this research were based on interviews. A total of 23 employees participated in the study, of whom five worked in production, 10 in product development, and eight in administration and management. Some of the participants were invited to participate in the study randomly, while others were invited because another participant had described their role as central to organisational innovation. The study followed the ethical principles of the Helsinki Declaration at all stages. No separate ethical approval was required because the participants were not children, animals or patients; rather, they were adults who anonymously and voluntarily agreed to participate. The participants were given a written copy of the research release, privacy statement and participation form to read before taking part in the study. These, together with the ethical principles of the study and issues related to anonymity, were also discussed verbally before the interviews. Each participant volunteered to take part in the study by signing a written consent form.

The interviews were conducted in autumn 2022 as semi-structured thematic interviews in which participants were asked to share their experiences of innovating and innovations in the organisation. The interviews lasted from 45 min to 2 h. Participants were encouraged to tell stories about innovation processes and innovation culture and to think about what innovation means in their own opinion. Additional questions included the following: What comes to your mind about innovations in your work? What kinds of innovations do you think are being developed or are expected to be developed in this work context? What kinds of development and innovation processes have you been involved in?

5.2 Narrative analysis for innovation stories

Storytelling is an emerging trend in social constructivism. It is now considered one of the most important ways in which people structure and construct their understandings of the world, life, and themselves (Cortazzi 2011). This study used narrative analysis (Polkinghorne 1995) as an analysis method, proceeding in three stages (see Figure 1). Before the start of the actual analysis, the transcribed data were read through twice to form a general understanding, while making notes on the key events related to innovations immediately observed in the data. In accordance with narrative analysis, in the actual analysis, the descriptions of the innovation processes and experiences from participants’ narratives were examined in detail. The narration was approached as a chronology (i.e., a causal story) built up along with the plot (i.e., a narrative), paying particular attention to how the different depicted stories or the characters’ own actions led to later events in certain circumstances (Elliott 2005; Polkinghorne 1995). In the analysis, the narratives appearing in the interviews (i.e., individual events and narrated experiences; Abbot 2008 (Abbot 2008)) were first located and then structured into a logical order, outlining the key moments, twists, and consequences in the events and experiences described, which connected to the contexts and environments in which they were produced (Spector-Mersel 2010).

Figure 1:

Example of the data analysis process.

In the second stage of the analysis, the observed narratives were cross-examined, paying particular attention to the similarities and differences in the contexts conveyed in the backgrounds of the narratives. Narratives attached to the same context were seen as forming a mutual conflict, but also related solutions (i.e., compromises). These data fragments were thus structured into their own categories. In the third stage, by taking a closer look at the previously observed narratives, core stories were constructed that described the innovation speech in the everyday life of the organisation and whose purpose was to summarize the narratives and the stories that arose from them to make them easier to understand (Emden 1998). The construction of the stories proceeded in a data-based manner by assembling into stories various structural elements attached to the innovation speech in each category of the previous stage, including the description of the context, the narrator and other actors appearing in the story, their evaluations, and the conclusion (Labov and Waletzky 1997). The main point of the story does not refer to the temporal conclusion of the event (Labov and Waletzky 1997) but to the resolution of the conflict described in the story, which was observed during the analysis of the stories. The construction of core stories was part of the analysis phase, as through them, it was possible to confirm which aspects, phases, and connections – from which the plots of the innovation stories could be built – appeared in the narratives (Riessman 2008), thus answering the second research question.

Based on the analysis, the core stories were structured in the following way. Each story begins with an introduction, providing the background and context. Next, the two central opposite sides are attached (i.e., the dichotomy containing the conflict between the two sides). The story ends with the compromise that appeared in the narratives, which appears as a kind of solution to the dichotomy. The stories were named after the compromise that was eventually built from the opposite sides of the characters in them and the context behind them. In the core stories presented in the results section, the original word choices and expressions of the interviewees have been preserved as closely as possible. The narratives of the same interviewees can be found in several stories, and the stories are thus not based on the narratives of certain individual interviewees.

6.1 “Personal but shared”: the story of innovation ownership

Here, ideas develop, refine, transform, and build into innovations. There can be many and diverse ideas in various stages of the process. We, as experts, possess a lot of knowledge and are, in a certain way, confident, wanting to create something new. In such a perspective, it’s important to be able to feel that you’ve accomplished something and say, “I’ve come up with or developed a product or a new way of doing things”. In this viewpoint, there are also dangers of self-centeredness that have emerged in the history of this organisation, especially when the significance of individuals was more pronounced and stronger. Excessive ambition or selfishness is not good because it leads to conflicts within the group. It’s also not a good thing because in today’s world, innovation – such as a new product or approach – cannot be developed from start to finish by a single person in such an organisation. Developing innovations is so much more complex and requires much more diverse and specific expertise nowadays, so few individuals can possess such skills. Therefore, it’s important that we fundamentally understand these innovations as shared and collective. They come about through compromises, refinement, collaboration, comparing and blending of ideas, and communal learning. Excessive humility – never expressing one’s opinion or offering criticism to others – is also not beneficial. The essence of innovation is not whose idea a particular thing is or whether someone receives a personal reward for it, but rather the shared experience of success and significance – understanding one’s role as part of something larger. Thus, the focus should be on what has been created, rather than emphasising who created it.

Ownership appears as a key context in the participants’ innovation experiences. In this story, the individual level and the communal level are emphasised, which are weighed from the perspectives of motivation and meaning, as is evident at the beginning of the story.

There was a lot of personal self-talk in the data, with the narrators emphasising their own visions, expertise, and experience, as well as the ideas formed based on them. Narratives describing the ambitions and strong – sometimes even selfish – ways of individuals who have worked in the organisation now or in the past also told us about personalities and their need to make their own ideas turn into innovations. The perspective of personal ownership of innovations was emphasised particularly in those narratives focusing on the company’s history. The story emphasises the idea that when the company was smaller, individual people had more visible importance for innovation, and thus ownership was distributed to a few. In the same way, previously problem-solving work and innovation were more individually manageable, so processes could be promoted by relying on the expertise of individual people. As the company grew and the industry developed, the importance of individual people was not seen to decrease, but harmful ambition and the personification of innovations were seen to endanger the culture of innovation and produce conflicts within the organisation:

There used to be a lot of fighting; we couldn’t come up with anything without having two competing ideas, and neither of us wanted to give up. But sometimes that competition was so bloody that it just wasn’t fun. (H10)

It hurts a lot if your own idea doesn’t make it into the final product. (H2)

The experiences of innovation that describe modern times emphasize shared ownership of innovation instead of personal ownership. A single innovation – whether related to a product or an organisation’s practices – requires multi-level and versatile expertise and the combination of several ideas. In the narratives set in modern times, there was thus talk of “cooperation”, “us”, and “sharing”. A sense of community was attached both to the cooperation between actors within the company and to networks and stakeholders outside. However, risks were also described in relation to communality. As the quote below shows, excessive humility and the need to please all actors (from customers to internal actors in the organisation) is problematic and at worst eats away at the innovativeness of innovation.

That the innovation is not tried to be squeesed so that it works for everyone. We cannot always satisfy the needs of all people with a certain solution, but different solutions are needed for different people. Because what happens is that if we try to make everyone’s wishes come true, then we will lower that bar for everyone else if we make too many compromises. In such a situation, that innovation is watered down if we try to make it suitable for too many people. (H8)

The story’s compromise is a description of innovation ownership as personal and shared at the same time: a collaboration where not only each actor’s ideas but also their critical evaluations of other ideas and actions are essential. The joint output is celebrated together, recognizing not only the importance of the group but also the role of each participant as part of the group.

Ambition is dangerous. But humility is also a bad word. Too much self-ambition is poison. But also, in the other hand, if you put yourself in such a position that you expect someone to do something for you or decide, it doesn’t really work. The most important thing is not who invented something, but what was invented. And for that, there are ways of how it should be done, so that there is not too much ownership of those ideas, that at an early stage we should talk about those things with as many people as possible, so that what we are doing becomes a common thing. (H4)

6.2 “Motivating necessity”: the story of innovation drivers

A crappy product was born from a starting point where none of us wanted to do it the way we had to. There was creativity even in that situation, but that creativity isn’t very motivating when we are forced to come up with ways to create something new or advance work within tight constraints. It’s a bit like innovations forced by necessity during wartime. There, necessity motivates because there’s so much at stake. However, this is not a war, so excessive compulsion adversely affects work motivation and leads to poor results. If this compulsion becomes too prevalent in the culture, people also learn to expect that all the answers are provided for them. On the other extreme are situations where you can do whatever you want. In the past, it was more common to have the freedom to work on things that were not directly related to a specific product. Nowadays, there is more urgency, which reduces freedom. Here, we have also seen that excessive freedom leads to individualism, and once again, we are on thin ice. Adequate courage and the opportunity to make decisions, to experiment, and even to play with ideas are important prerequisites, which fortunately are often realised in our work. In such cases, compulsion is in the right proportion, helping us understand expectations while also providing sufficient freedom and flexibility. Because we are talking about work where innovation is so crucial, creating something new is always more or less obligatory. Typically, these boundaries exist here; sometimes they could be more clearly defined, and there is enough freedom. Supervisors don’t shout, and mistakes are not punished. In such a scenario, compulsion is motivating and acts as a driver for innovation.

The second story describes how the company struggles between necessity and freedom. In this case, the narratives are contextualized to the drivers behind innovation.

The data contained narratives about excessive necessity and the problems caused by it, which appeared as a weakening of work motivation and poor results. The factors producing coercion were urgency and the strong and guiding views of those in formal or informal positions of power. The conflict between the opinions of the individual narrators and certain actors belonging to the community appeared to the narrators as a “compulsion”, in which they must submit to the strong guidance of another. The narratives focused on experiences of duty, compulsion, fulfillment, demands. These experiences were described as weakening the motivation of those working in expert work, the desire to innovate, and, at worst, the quality of the end result:

So, dictated by necessity [we create something new], and therefore there are constantly those older [employees] there who have seen everything here, and they remind me that work motivation is quite lost at the moment, and I can’t do it; we have had to come up with all the means by which we’re even able to run this business … it [necessity] would be a good motivator … if they came in the right proportion; then it would be ok. (H 16)

The role of freedom for innovation was mainly emphasised in the interviews as a synonym for an open atmosphere and a safe culture; thus, it was described as a positive driver. In the same way, the material produced narratives about excessive freedom, which could lead to individual-oriented activities, forgetting the organisation’s goals, and thus inappropriate results. Excessive freedom was described as leading to uncertainty about what the organisation was aiming for. Moreover, it was seen to cause “clutter”, which took activities in inappropriate directions and caused confusion in the community:

It’s a fairly open work community, and there needs to be a safe atmosphere so that people dare to say their own opinion, what works, and what doesn’t; otherwise, those ideas won’t come, and they’ll get buried in the creator’s head at worst, and that’s not good. But at the same time, the decisions have to be made; otherwise, nothing will happen, so you have to sometimes take that role and say that we will do it this way. (H10)

As a kind of compromise, the situational relativity of necessity and freedom was formed in the story, as in certain work situations and events, necessity appeared as a natural part of work and – together with sufficient freedom – as a motivation. The structure of the story thus becomes a narrative about necessity and freedom as conflict-sensitive extremes that are sometimes slipped within the framework of a harmonious everyday life that contains enough freedom but also some necessity. Through these narratives and the story formed from them, necessity and freedom are attached as prerequisites to innovations.

6.3 “Evolution in steps”: the story of continuity of innovation

Big innovations, those products or truly significant organisational changes that have a major impact on the development of this company, are seldom celebrated. That’s why it’s difficult to grasp innovation as a whole. Innovation in this work involves solving small problems as part of a larger whole. We break down individual problems or complexities into smaller parts and seek the best solutions for them. The difficulty then lies in the fact that our experience is not that we innovate or build innovations. Those small pieces, small advancements, don’t feel meaningful or valuable from an innovation perspective. Instead, the value and sense of achievement should come from the journey of continuously learning a little, moving step by step forward. Sometimes you must pause to look at that journey – to see the leaps forward that all those small parts and steps have taken you. We have a lot of staff who have had long careers in this organisation. They can see that journey and the bigger picture and understand the significance of individual steps. Individual products or end results are always built on the background of new products or outcomes. Temporally, it’s an evolution. It’s about constantly innovating, but in small steps.

In the third innovation story, the context shows the continuity of innovation: a temporal dimension where innovation can be viewed and understood by looking not so much at what lies ahead but at history.

In this story, the concept of innovation is portrayed as problematic for the story tellers. The narratives highlighted reflections on what innovation is in the end. Innovation as some significant, great invention was mirrored in the great innovations that have occurred in the history of the world, as was evident in the narrative below. Compared to these historically significant innovations, the narrator’s own innovation experiences were described as modest:

The term innovation is tricky here because the world is full of the real Leonardo da Vincis and Benjamin Franklins, who have really invented big things, but I can’t claim that I invent the same kind of gold every day. Sometimes a little gold is born, but I don’t know if it necessarily ends with a product. (H8)

However, in the narratives, the participants felt that they were also innovating. They described innovation as being linked to continuous problem solving and the individual small actions, ideas, and development steps taken in daily work. These appeared to the authors as everyday events, which is why conceptualizing them as innovations – or even as parts of innovation – was difficult, although it became clearer as the interviews and narrations progressed.

The most difficult thing is to understand what innovation is. [In a certain area,] that innovation might be a drop of glue on the edge of the membrane that made the whole thing work. Or, if we discover a defect in the product, isn’t that also an innovation? (H11)

The compromise in this story is that innovation is a kind of evolutionary chain of events, where every small step is essential in terms of the end result and its continuity and further development. This understanding of evolution was described as important for appreciating and enjoying the work and everyday activities:

I can show photos of our current product [parts] and the older ones, so it hasn’t always felt like it was some kind of innovation, but they’ve changed an awful lot over the years, and I guess it’s, I don’t know, evolution … I don’t know if innovation has to be, like bigger than evolution. I don’t know. (H10)

6.4 “Balance of the facts and intuition”: the story of innovation decisions

In this work, we are in a certain way in the middle ground between art and science and at their interfaces. Much of that innovation is intuitive. You must have enough knowledge, understanding, and experience in the matter to be able to justify to yourself and others why you do what you do. That intuitiveness is based specifically on tacit knowledge of the identity of this company – some kind of feeling or idea of what is right or wrong. On the one hand, research, measurement, and facts play an equally central role here. We aim to do background work – we even do research ourselves – as the basis for their innovations. On the other hand, we also measure how any prototype works or what kind of effects the finished innovation has. At its best, intuition and facts live in symbiosis here, creating a foundation, especially for decision-making, which is hugely included in innovation processes. Some of those decisions are ones that we can make in everyday life, such as what to try or what would be central in terms of development and learning. However, there are also decisions that we employees cannot make. Sometimes there are competing ideas here that have already been developed, but neither can be completed. In this case, many different people participate in decision-making, and it is guided by many perspectives; the role of management is also central. Ultimately, the polyphonic combination of subjective and objective is typically – and at least should b – the background of the decision that guides innovation. This is not always the case, and even such a starting point for decision-making is not simple. It is challenging to make decisions when, objectively evaluated, there are two or more equally good alternatives, in which case the decision must be based on a subjective view, i.e., intuition. People look at the world from different perspectives – from their own experience – so the perspectives can be very contradictory and far from each other. It is essential to ask for whom it is being done or from what point of view value is sought. In difficult decision-making situations, the view of those who have the most power, responsibility, know-how, and understanding of the company naturally becomes guiding.

Decision-making related to innovation processes is built into the context of the fourth story. Within this framework, the narratives described reflections on the role of intuition and facts in the advancement of innovation.

In the narratives, intuition was spoken of as a “feeling” and “understanding” of things that cannot be directly measured or documented. For example, the company’s identity and vision, as starting points for innovation, were discussed as an understanding based on experience. In several narratives, learning, long work experience, and understanding of the organisation’s culture, practices, and values formed the basis of intuition, which was at the center when decisions were made either about individual experiments at the employee level or about larger strategic choices at the organisational level:

How do we blend it [innovation] into our DNA so that if things have always been done this way, they can’t be done in a completely different way. You have to understand what the company wants. Someone who understands that theory terribly can completely disagree, but that window alone is too small. (H4)

Focusing equally on decision-making, so-called factual speech was emphasised in the interviews. In this speech, views on the role of data, theory, measurement, and testing in decision-making were emphasised. This was described as essential for promoting innovation, as it was necessary to understand the substance-level issues, technology, and operations related to the industry and products, which were real and the same for everyone, regardless of subjective experience.

Of course, the key is the prototype – that when you are allowed to test, it is a good way to make choices; it is the right way. … Well, that [method of testing] is good; that’s what we always aim for here, or else measurement, it gives objective measures. (H7)

The idea of a balance between intuition and facts in a decision-making situation appears as a compromise in the story. It is essential that choices are based on information and reliable metrics, but they should also take into account the organisation’s value base, culture, and ideas of what is right and appropriate in each context. In the end, intuition and facts are not just opposite points of view; in the narratives, intuition was defined as a feeling based on the learning process, knowledge, and experience, which thus had a factual basis, even though a decision made based on intuition was not always easy to describe and structure to others and could cause the community to question the actual basis of the decision:

It’s hard to say; it’s [decision-making is] not just a feeling. I would say that intelligent intuition, it is not a feeling, but it is based on learning, which arises through practice, theoretical knowledge, and doing. At some point, you get a feeling that this is the right thing to do and it’s worth continuing. In practice, however, decisions should be based on measurements and reasoning – substance. Based on subjective experience, there may be differences in opinion, but when tested, it can be proven that this is the best. (H23)

6.5 “Humanely effective”: the story of innovation value

When we talk about product innovations – or organisational innovations that promote product development or production – we are of course talking about money. A company must produce in order to ensure its existence, but the essential question is by what means this financial return is achieved. This organisation has grown tremendously over the years, and it poses challenges for certain types of family assets. Before, everyone knew each other; it was easy to build trust, and thus humanity was self-evident in all activities. Now we must consciously strive to maintain this humanity. On the other hand, there are opportunities here to develop your own work from the point of view of your own well-being: If you have to bang your head against a wall because of a way of working day after day, and if it can be solved with your own ideas, then you can solve it. These everyday solutions develop operating methods to be humane, but they also bring efficiency. A person is a creative being, and it is important that that creative potential is put to use. At the same time, work that does not require a human can be automated. This has been done and will be done, and it does not mean that the work will stop. Human resilience is a key value in innovation also because many innovations are based on long experience – a long working career – and thus it is important that these working careers can be maintained. It has not always been successful, but it is worth striving for. Learning is created through competence and well-being, which in itself is already a value in innovation.

The fifth and last innovation story is based on narratives that emphasised defining the value of innovation. In the interviews, the innovation speech focused on considerations of the company’s existence, financial stability, and competitiveness, but equally on human and social values. The idea of how to increase the efficiency of the organisation and promote the economy while making work more meaningful and supportive of well-being and learning was emphasised in innovation.

Economy, cost-effectiveness, and competitiveness were repeated in the descriptions of “the benefit of the company”. To some extent, this appeared to involve confrontational speech between the company and the personnel. In such a confrontation, these two areas were seen as separate, and each value perspective was brought forward as independent and as its own starting point, as shown in the following excerpt:

The value of innovation comes from where the company benefits the most. From there, I try to find the big lines. You shouldn’t interfere with small things that have no economic significance or that are not very significant in terms of the big operation, but then it should be those that are essential for us to be able to develop new products as rationally and cost-effectively as possible. (H13)

The predominance of an economic or efficiency perspective was criticized in the participants’ speech if it happened at the expense of well-being or other work. In this case, the speech presented perspectives on considerations of humanity and examples of situations where the value of innovation had been shown to be humanely and socially sustainable:

The pace of work is really hectic, so learning is not fun. There are changes all the time; internalizing them is learning, which is not always pleasant. Sometimes there should be a steady time so that you don’t have to worry about changes. … You have to think about what is good enough. It is usually awfully good. Then there would also be time for stopping and learning, daring, and inventing. When we do enough good … then we can manage “to have long working careers – long working relationships in accordance with sustainable development.” (H18)

However, the different narratives about the value of innovation created a larger overall picture of how different values appeared in the context of innovation than the individual narratives. In this story, the view of consequentialism is emphasised as a compromise: human value in the long run also produces financial value, which again promotes the organisation’s human activities. This appears as the continuous development of work from an employee-oriented perspective, where the starting point is the promotion of well-being and the meaningfulness of work, which accumulates into more efficient work for the organisation:

Due to my own natural laziness, I have had the desire to make this job easier so that with as little work as possible, the same end result can be achieved. I think that laziness is creative efficiency. [Tells an example of a development project that started from the person’s own desire to make it easier] … After a few years, our numbers grew. … and we doubled the possibility of how much a certain product could be sold. (H15)