Turbulence and Redesign:: Dynamic Innovation and the Dilemmas of US Military Jet Propulsion Development

Innovation is regularly a disorderly process, but rarely moreso than in situations where a search for new, complex technologies proceeds in environments rich with uncertainties (re materials, scientific knowledge, strategy, reliability) and where that search proceeds through cycles of redesign fed by feedback from testing and use. Building on insights provided by Karl Weick, this phenomenon here is described as dynamic innovation, which is distinguished from more familiar analytic and synthetic innovation approaches. A historical case study of such experimental development, focused on the development of US jet propulsion in World War Two and the Early Cold War, provides an exemplary window into the non-linear and often conflictual processes through which multiple uncertainties are engaged by project managers and their colleagues.