Mobilising differential visions for new product innovation

In contexts of complexity and high uncertainty, turning the differing visions of stakeholders into a shared attainable vision is crucial to the creation, validation and acceptance of a realized innovation. This paper seeks to explore the contingency role that product innovation teams play in mobilising the divergent visions of various organisational stakeholders into an idealised future. After studying four new product innovation projects in three software organisations, we identified innovation of meaning, multilateral participation, and the consilience and organisation of context as the three quintessentially embedded processes that underpin the mobilisation of stakeholders’ expressions of the future into an idealised future vision. The case evidence also demonstrates that vision incongruence on the part of different stakeholders concerning the future innovation may impede the generation of a shared interpretation of the future, and hence the subsequent capture of value.

► We explore the contingency role of innovation teams in mobilising visions of project ecologies. ► Identified processes that underpin the mobilisation of differential visions. ► Three outcomes of interaction between project ecologies differential visions. ► Incongruence in ecology visions was detrimental to new product innovation.