Storymaking: How the Co-Creation of Narratives Engages People for Innovation and Transformation

In a world undergoing continuous change, organizations find themselves facing the challenge of how to keep innovating to stay competitive. Inside any organization, people are the cornerstone on which innovation rests and builds, yet it is ever more difficult to engage everyone in designing their organization. This book explores and discusses how employees can be engaged digitally to assist innovation initiatives and lead to organizational transformation.

Storymaking and Organizational Transformation is based on the research activities of the platform IDeaLs during the year 2020 and provides a perspective on how employees can be helped to understand and even contribute to organizational innovation spontaneously. The book contributes to advancing understanding of engagement from two main perspectives: first, the authors introduce an approach based on storymaking; second, six cases are studied in depth and the application of the digital storymaking approach is explained. The authors introduce new ways of organizing in a context of ongoing change, as they bring forth the idea that engagement is a continuous practice of designing meaningful narratives which connect people and evolve along with them.

The book will appeal to both academics and practitioners across management fields. Scholars of innovation management and organization sciences will benefit from the extensive review of organizational transformation and innovation from a sensemaking perspective, whilst the practical, case studies provide a valuable resource for practitioners looking to effect change and manage transformation.

Tommaso Buganza is Full Professor of Leadership and Innovation at the School of Management of Politecnico di Milano where he also is co-founder of LEADIN’Lab, the Laboratory for Leadership, Design and Innovation. He is a lecturer in Innovation Management and Project Management, responsible for the Project Management Academy and coordinator of the innovation and training area at MIP (Politecnico di Milano Graduate School of Business). He is scientific director of IDeaLs the global research platform of Politecnico di Milano that pioneers new ways to engage people to make innovation happen with companies. He co-founded Symplatform, the symposium on digital platforms that aims to foster a constructive discussions among scholars and practitioners. He is a member of the scientific committee of the International Product Development Management Conference EIASM-IPDMC. His research activity explores the intersection between technological innovation and leadership and has been published in peer-reviewed journals.

Paola Bellis is a Post-Doc Researcher at the Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering at Politecnico di Milano and serves as director of IDeaLs, the global research platform which involves international companies pioneering new ways to engage people to make innovation happen. Her research interests are focused in the interplay between Innovation Management and Leadership. In particular, she has been working on the role of team of dyads for the development of innovation in established companies, moreover she focuses on engagement strategies for innovation development.

Silvia Magnanini is PhD Student at the School of Management of Politecnico di Milano, where she serves as a researcher of LEADIN’Lab, the Laboratory for Leadership, Design and Innovation. Her research interests are focused in Innovation and Design Management. She serves as senior researcher in IDeaLs the global research platform of Politecnico di Milano that pioneers new ways to engage people to make innovation happen with companies. In particular, she has been researching about new collaborative practices to let employees converge towards an innovative vision.

Joseph B. Press is an Adjunct Professor of Strategic Design at the Parsons School of Design and a Visiting Professor at Politecnico di Milano Schools of Management and Design. He is also a Futures Advisor at the Institute For The Future where he advises organizations in the design of meaningful futures. After a 10 year career as an architect, including completing his Ph.D. in Design Technology at MIT, he pivoted into management consulting. He capped his 15 year career at Deloitte by founding Deloitte Digital Switzerland, an interdisciplinary team focusing on the design of innovative digital experiences for global organizations across industries. He then became the Global Innovator at the Center for Creative Leadership, where he led leadership programs to co-create solutions to challenges requiring systemic transformation. To explore the intersections of his experiences in innovation, design, and leadership, he co-founded IDeaLs with the Leadin’Lab at the Politecnico di Milano.

Abraham (Rami) B. Shani is a Professor of Management at the Orfalea College of Business, California Polytechnic University. His research interest includes collaborative research methodologies, work and organization design, organizational change and development, learning in and by organizations, sustainability and sustainable effectiveness. His work was published in Academy of Management Journal, British Journal of Management, California Management Review, Human Relations, Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Journal of Change Management, Organizational Dynamics, Sloan Management Review, and others. His most recent book (co-authored with David Coghlan) is Conducting Action Research (SAGE, 2018). Since 2008 he is the co-editor of the annual research series, Research in Organization Change and Development (Emerald Publications). He served as the Management Department Head and Associate Dean at CalPoly and as the president of the Organization Development and Change Division at the Academy of Management. He is on the editorial board of five journals.

Daniel Trabucchi is Assistant Professor at the School of Management, Politecnico di Milano, where he is part of LEADIN’Lab, the Laboratory for LEAdership, Design and INnovation. He works on Innovation Management, with two main areas of research and teaching: platform-based business models and the human side of innovation (with strong focuses on engagement and agile methods to make innovation happen, within the research platform IDeaLs). He is scientific director of IDeaLs and he co-founded Symplatform, the symposium on digital platforms that aims to foster a constructive discussions among scholars and practitioners.

His research has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Journal of Product Innovation Management, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Internet Research, Research-Technology Management, Creativity and Innovation Management, Technology Analysis and Strategic Management, and European Journal of Innovation Management; he is also a reviewer for many of these journals.

Roberto Verganti is Professor of Leadership and Innovation at the Stockholm School of Economics. He is also the founder of Leadin’Lab, the laboratory on the LEAdership, Design and INnovation of Politecnico di Milano, and scientific director of IDeaLs. He has been a visiting scholar at the Harvard Business School twice, at the Copenhagen Business School and at the California Polytechnic University. Roberto serves in the Advisory Board of the European Innovation Council of the European Commission. Roberto is the author of Overcrowded, published by MIT Press in 2017 and of Design-Driven Innovation, published by Harvard Business Press in 2009, which has been nominated by the Academy of Management for the George R. Terry Book Award as one of the best 6 management books published in 2008 and 2009. Roberto has issued more than 150 articles. He is in the Hall of Fame of the Journal of Product Innovation Management and has been featured on The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Financial Times, Forbes, BusinessWeek. Roberto is a regular contributor to the Harvard Business Review.

Federico Paolo Zasa is a PhD Candidate at the School of Management of Politecnico di Milano. He is a researcher of LEADIN’Lab, the Laboratory for LEAdership, Design and Innovation, and also part of IDeaLs - Innovation and Design as Leadership, a research platform which investigates how to engage people to make innovation happen, where he focuses on the development of analytical tools for visual and text data. His research focuses on the cognitive aspects of the innovation process. In particular, he analyses how the interplay of cognitive diverse individuals and the establishment of a shared vision drive innovation.