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196 MANAGING KNOWLEDGE WORK AND INNOVATION

Knowledge creation, diffusion, implementation & use

Agenda
Formation Selection Implementation Routinization

Social, organizational and political context
and networks
Figure 9.3 A processual view of innovation (e.g. after Clark et al., 1992)

schematically in Figure 9.3, describes the episodes of the process in a little
more detail as:

• Agenda formation – the process of becoming aware of new ideas and of the
problems that they may help to address.
• Selection – the further processing and promotion of ideas within the organiza-
tion such that particular ideas are chosen to go forward for further develop-
ment because they are seen as matching the problems the organization, or
particular managers, are currently experiencing.
• Implementation – the process of actually introducing the selected ideas to
the organization and applying them to the local context in the forms of new
products, services, technologies or processes.
• Routinization – the situation where the understanding of the innovation has
developed to a point at which its use has become ‘normal’ and it is now seen
as a standard working practice to be adopted in other parts of the organiza-
tion where relevant.

This emphasizes that, rather than occurring in a linear sequence, these differ-
ent aspects of innovation are iterative, overlapping and conflated (Robertson
et al., 1996) – hence the term ‘episodes’ as opposed to ‘stages’. For example,
lessons learned during implementation may refine definitions of problems or
may influence the design and further diffusion of new ideas and technologies
(Fleck, 1994; Leonard-Barton, 1988). Rather than seeing innovation as a fairly
straightforward process of spreading and implementing a pre-fixed ‘best prac-
tice’ invention, the process view notes the inherently uncertain and open-ended
nature of innovation. Unintended outcomes are common as different groups
and individuals who get involved at different times attempt to own and influence

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