The evolution and disintegration of innovation narratives during scaling in science-based ventures
Peter Kalum Schou
kHUB post date: March 2025
Originally published: 24 October 2024 (PDMA JPIM • Vol. 42, Issue 2 • March 2025)
Read time: 80 minutes
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Science-based ventures (SBVs) are crucial vehicles that bring new technologies from the lab and to the mainstream market. During this journey, innovation narratives play a crucial role in coordinating innovation. Innovation narratives are linguistic representations that actors use to make sense of innovation activities, events and actions. In other words, they are stories that drive sensemaking, which is a critical element in avoiding conflicts in product innovation process and securing coordinated activities between diverse actors. However, as SBVs shift markets and undergo radical changes, they may have to update narratives to fit these changes. Yet, little is known about how innovation narratives and coordination evolve during this journey. To improve knowledge on this matter, I conducted a 24-month study of a science-based venture crossing over to a commercial market. I find that during this transition, innovation narratives shift from being shaped by progressive storytelling, where the benefits of becoming commercial and hiring nonacademics is highlighted, to being shaped by retrogressive storytelling, where incumbents and newcomers use their respective pasts to develop divergent narratives, and finally to appearing as disintegrated storytelling, where narratives compete and hinder coordination in innovation processes. Building on these findings, I construct a process model of how innovation narratives evolve and disintegrate as SBVs scale. This article contributes to knowledge on innovation management by illustrating how innovation narratives affect coordination in innovation processes, as well as how they may evolve during organizational change. Furthermore, this article illuminates the challenges that SBVs face to their innovation processes when scaling.
Practitioner Points:
- In innovation processes, “soft” cultural elements, such as the narratives and metaphors employees use, are as important as formal processes and structures in terms of coordinating innovation processes.
- Conflicting narratives and metaphors among employees can create barriers in innovation processes, especially in radical innovation projects. Managers should actively monitor and replace conflicting narratives and metaphors with unifying ones to maintain cohesion.
- In addition to technical skills, managers must develop cultural awareness and storytelling abilities to shape innovation. Similar to driving organizational change, managing innovation requires crafting and steering the narratives within the organization.