Development of the work and role of board of directorsfor increased innovation capacity

Research Project, 2018 – 2020

With strong needs to innovate, it is essential to look into how board of directors view their role to instigate innovation and how their work can be stronger connected to the challenges executives and their organization face in operationalizing such strategies. The partner organizations will participate in formulating issues and problems that the larger data collection will focus on, and further take part in discussions included in the analysis of the results in order to enable the development of practical knowledge from the study, in addition to the theoretical perspectives.

Focus is on developing increased knowledge and understandings for both theory and practice that will further allow development of models and processes for how to strengthen and understand boards work in their efforts to strengthen the innovative capacity of the organization. Results from interview studies and questionnaires will be discussed and reflected upon in collaboration with partner organizations to enable further development of important mechanisms. Other involved actors such as IVA, CMB, Styrelseakademin will be involved in spreading results.

The project is divided into a qualitative and a quantitative part. The qualitative study is based on a case study approach of the partner organizations, where semi-structured interviews with the board members and part of the management team will be conducted. The results will then be discussed and reflected upon in WS:s in order to understand critical mechanisms. The quantitative study will be a larger questionnaire, targeted to board members of organizations with ambitions to strengthen its innovation capacity. The questionnaire will be based on the outcomes from the case studies.