'Authoring' Open Innovation: The Managerial Practices of an Open Innovation Director

Journal article, 2015

This paper asks how we can understand managerial practices in open innovation, a recently popularized way of organizing innovative work. Open innovation implies opening up the borders of the organization, creating a context where conventional steering and managerial tools no longer apply. Utilizing a collaborative research approach, following an open innovation collaboration over 8 years, this paper outlines the managerial practices that direct the collaboration. These practices are important for meaning making and identity creation in the collaboration and can be understood as a form of authorship, a continuous intervention strategy to manage, develop and change the organizational context. Utilizing a collaborative research approach including in-depth interviews with the director of a large-scale open innovation initiative about her mundane work, this paper argues that the managerial practices develop in the interplay between the manager and the other participants. These practices are important for meaning making and identity creation in the collaboration and can be understood as a form of authorship, a continuous intervention strategy to manage, develop and change the organizational context.