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Postcard No. 4 from Woodside, California 207

“Catalyzing Management Information,” later in this chapter, for an
example). Approaches for such invention vary immensely (from the storied
“a thought in the shower” to more theory-driven, patentable inventions in
engineering; for one account, see Wiener, 1993). Even though inventive
methodologies lack scientific status, they should not be discounted as unde-
sirable, making validation as a quest for knowledge more valuable or at
least inherently more respectable than invention. Miner and Mezias (1996)
argue that such “generative learning” that includes “an active, creative
component” remains of crucial interest to “students of scientific invention,
product development, and ‘creative’ organizations” while they acknowl-
edge it represents formidable conceptual and modeling problems (p. 93).
What would support and catalyze inventive activities in management? A
number of well-known concrete approaches are shortly recalled here in the
pragmatic interest of inducing invention. First, approach the problem or
issue through a different perspective or lens. This perspective can be a novel
theory that might open up new ways of thinking about the issue. To the
extent that the theory is predictive and operationable and thus formative of
management behavior or structure, it could provide a useful tool for inven-
tion of an alternative management practice. What would this theory suggest
is a good way to manage in a case appropriate to its predictions? Or we
might test the limits of the theory. In what areas are its predictions brittle
so that the experiments might be decisive in their impact? Or a shift in the
point of view, such as customer’s experience of purchasing and consuming
the offering, might offer fresh ideas. For example, how might we facilitate
the (lead) customer participating in the innovation process directly (von
Hippel, 2005)?
Second, management inventors might study analogues. What can we
learn from nontraditional organizations, perhaps outside the business
world, in terms of the principles under which they operate? What can we
learn from other institutions (for example, markets or cities) or biological
processes (evolution of life forms) that could inspire us to think about how
to manage differently, using an entirely different set of principles from what
we have, presumably, inherited from the industrial age? For example, there
is a line of research that suggests organizations—like living organisms—
should manifest “requisite variety” (dating back to Ashby, 1956). Thus the
challenge for scholar-inventors might be to invent management practices