Communication design logics and innovation management
Stephan Ludwig, Dennis Herhausen, Luigi De Luca, Dhruv Grewal
kHUB post date: September 2025
Originally published: 11 November 2024 (PDMA JPIM • Vol. 42, Issue 5 • September 2025)
Read time: 55 minutes
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Effective communication with external or internal stakeholders is crucial for innovation processes. The fourth wave of digital technologies and the fifth industrial revolution have increased the range of communication possibilities, amplifying both the number of communication channels and the availability of data. Yet in existing research that tends to treat communication as an art instead of a science, the evidence only scratches the surface of its mechanics and inner logic. To provide a unified theoretical framework, this study highlights the importance of the four pillars of communication design logic (source, situation, intentions, and impact) in the innovation processes. According to communication theories, individual differences in stakeholders' backgrounds, situations, and intentions might result in systematic variations in what and how they communicate, which influences their subsequent beliefs and reactions to innovation outcomes. By examining relevant communications in terms of their design logic, innovation researchers can address a wide range of questions across ideation, development, and implementation stages. Using novel techniques and unstructured data (e.g., text, image, video, audio mining), the current study reveals tactics for exploring such topics across communication types. The proposed framework also raises several research questions that can be pursued to enhance knowledge of how communication design influences innovation management.
Practitioner points
- Enhanced stakeholder communication: Managers should prioritize effective communication design with both internal and external stakeholders throughout the innovation process. By analyzing and leveraging communication design logics, managers can facilitate idea sharing, collaboration, and alignment of goals, thereby enhancing innovation outcomes.
- Utilization of digital technologies: The study emphasizes the use of digital communication technologies and novel techniques for analyzing unstructured data (e.g., text, images, video). Managers can harness these tools to gain deeper insights into stakeholder needs based on their communication data, improving the ideation, development, and implementation stages of innovation.
- Strategic communication framework: Adopting a structured approach to communication that considers how these reflect the source, situation, and intentions, as well as the impact can lead to more predictable and favorable innovation outcomes.