Seeing the Unseen: Sensemaking as a Deliberate Strategy for Radical Innovation

Abstract

The main purpose of this study is to reveal how organizational-level sensemaking can be used to create radical innovation. Sensemaking is a term that has been coined in the scholarly literature by Karl Weick (1995) and has been described as an organizational diagnostic process that seeks to construct conceivable interpretations from indistinct or even ambiguous environmental signals that are sufficient to sustain action. Radical innovations, for the purposes in this paper, are products that are enabled by substantially new technologies, offer substantially greater consumer benefits compared to existing projects, and demand significant changes to consumption or usage patterns by customers (O’Connor & De Martino, 2006). This paper makes the argument that sensemaking is a concrete, definable construct that can enable radical innovation. Hence, the research question being pursued in this study is, “how do firms use organizational sensemaking across different industries to be more systematic in creating radical innovations?” Forty scholarly papers are considered in this thematic synthesis literature review to assess key themes and relationships between organizational sensemaking and radical innovation. The findings show that organizational sensemaking forms several links between market dynamism and radical innovation. Thus, organizational sensemaking forms a nexus between market dynamism and radical innovation. The findings also support that sensemaking is consistent and fairly generalizable across industries. A new model is proposed highlighting the connections between sensemaking and radical innovation. Finally, future research is considered.

Keywords: Radical Innovation; Sensemaking; Strategy