Feedback Loops as Dynamic Processes of Organizational Knowledge Creation in the Context of the Innovations’ Front‐end
| Author | Hammad Akbar,Yehuda Baruch,Nikolaos Tzokas |
| Published date | 01 July 2018 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12251 |
| Date | 01 July 2018 |
British Journal of Management, Vol. 29, 445–463 (2018)
DOI: 10.1111/1467-8551.12251
Feedback Loops as Dynamic Processes of
Organizational Knowledge Creation in the
Context of the Innovations’ Front-end
Hammad Akbar, Yehuda Baruch1and Nikolaos Tzokas2
University of Liverpool Management School, Chatham Street, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, L69 7ZH,
UK, 1Southampton Business School, University of Southampton University Road, Southampton, SO17 1BJ,
UK, and 2Faculty of Business, Room 303, CookworthyBuilding, Drake Circus, Plymouth PL4 8AA,
Devon, UK
Corresponding author email: hammad@liverpool.ac.uk
Feedback loops are instrumental in the organizational knowledge creation (OKC) pro-
cess across the highly uncertain and dynamicinnovation’s front-end. Therefore, managers
should be aware of how these loops unfold, how to recognize meaningful patterns and
how to steer them towards planned and emergent outcomes. Easy to say, dicult to prac-
tise! This empirical paper focuses on knowledge–conceptualization – the newknowledge’s
generation-crystallization journey – and develops a unique model of feedback loops as
dynamic processes of OKCin the context of the innovations’ front-end. Using ten quali-
tatively studied innovations, the authors identify five front-end OKC stages (generation,
evaluation, expansion, refinement and crystallization) and pattern these based on their
overlaps to explore the associated feedback loops. This model distinctively illustrates
increasing–decreasing, diverging–converging and frequent negative-cum-positive loops,
and illuminates the complex and rich patterns of loops not captured before.
Introduction
Innovations are entwined with organizational
competitiveness (Ritala, 2012; Tregaskis et al.,
2013). Critical to developing innovations is the
front-end – involving an innovation’s generation-
crystallization journey (Poskela and Martinsuo,
2009) – because it determines whether the in-
novation merits further investments by the
organization (Cooper, 2008). Yet, the front-end is
dynamic, i.e. evolving (Brentani and Reid, 2012),
and its dynamics remains unclear (Frishammar,
Lichtenthaler and Richtn´
er, 2013). It is, therefore,
an important context for firms aiming to develop
competitive innovations to understand. As inno-
We gratefully acknowledge the helpful comments and
useful suggestions of Prof. Haridimos Tsoukas, Prof.
Dennis Gioia, Prof. Dorothy Leonard and the anony-
mous reviewers in developing this paper.
vations are also the novel outcomes of knowledge
creation (Quintane et al., 2011) the front-end can
be understood in terms of organizational knowl-
edge creation (OKC). Organizational knowledge
creation is the process of making available and
amplifying knowledge created by individuals,
as well as crystallizing and connecting it to an
organization’s knowledge system (Nonaka and
von Krogh, 2009), e.g. skills, capabilities, expertise
(Vlaisavljevic, Cabello-Medina and P´
erez-Lu˜
no,
2015), systems and practices combined (Daven-
port and Prusak, 2003). Organizational knowledge
creation emphasizes co-construction, emergence,
social context and learning (Nonaka, 1994),
among others, and provides a robust theoretical
basis to engage with the dynamic process of devel-
oping innovations in the context of the front-end.
We concentrate on an important mechanism
in developing innovations and in creating new
knowledge: the feedback loops. They are the
© 2017 British Academy of Management. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4
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446 H. Akbar, Y. Baruch and N. Tzokas
recursive cycles of interactions over time (Mc-
Carthy et al., 2006). Feedback loops improve and
refine innovations(Van de Ven et al., 2008), articu-
late new knowledge (Fischer, 2001) and synthesize
the conflict, or tension, between creativity and
translation or exploration and exploitation (see
Nonaka, Toyama and Konno, 2000). They are
typically categorized as positive, i.e. reinforcing
and amplifying, or negative, i.e. contradictory and
correcting, loops (Sterman, 2001). Thus, we know
a lot about the important role they perform. How-
ever, what we understand less is, along the process
of developing innovations, how loops facilitate
movement, how they function, how they evolve,
how they fluctuate, how they vary and how they
dier, and the dynamic patterns, if any, in their
characteristics, role and/or types. These patterns
are not theorized by the existing models, e.g. the
coupling model (Rothwell, 1994) or the chain-
linked model (Kline and Rosenberg, 1986). These
models use stages, i.e. the higher-level conceptu-
alizations, involving sets of tasks and activities,
organized as a series of (managerially useful) steps
to achieve the desired outcomes (Lin and Hsieh,
2011), and depict loops through arrows and cycles
between dierent stages. However, their stages
are linear, or sequential; a convenient but limited
approach to model the complex dynamics of loops
because stages overlap (Cooper, 2008; Schroeder
et al., 1989). Illuminating the dynamic patterns of
loops requires that the loops are modelled based
on how stages overlap and then feed back into one
another. This gap hitherto has remained open,
but is vital to bridge it, given the importance of
loops in developing innovations (Bouncken, 2011;
Scarbrough, Robertson and Swan, 2015), across
the highly uncertain front-end (Br¨
oring, Martin
Cloutier and Leker, 2006; Herstatt and Verworn,
2004).
In a recent article, Akbar and Tzokas
(2013) identified five front-end, knowledge–
conceptualization stages – generation, evaluation,
expansion, refinement and crystallization – and
suggested how they might overlap. However, they
did not model the feedback loops based on the
suggested overlaps. Following on from this work,
we pattern these stages based on their overlaps and
ask how feedback loops contribute to developing
innovations along the front-end OKC stages and
whether there are any evolving patterns of loops
which could shape our theoretical and managerial
understanding about their dynamics across the
front-end. These research questions also respond
to the recent calls for a better understanding of
the front-end (Frishammar, Lichtenthaler and
Richtn´
er, 2013) and the dynamic process of OKC
(Von Krogh and Geilinger, 2014) in the context of
innovations (Vlaisavljevic, Cabello-Medina and
P´
erez-Lu˜
no, 2015). Using ten cases of qualita-
tively studied innovations via 40 semi-structured
interviews, we identify the five stages and pat-
tern these in relation to one another to explore
their feedbacks. Our aim is to develop a broad
model of the feedback loops in the context of the
innovations’ front-end.
We oer a unique model, which distinc-
tively illustrates the front-end journey through
increasing–decreasing, diverging–converging and
frequent negative-cum-positive loops. These pat-
terns shed new light on the loops’ non-uniform
but systematic dynamics not captured earlier,
and on their varying types, which blurs their
negative–positive distinction in the study’s con-
text. Hereafter, we discuss our context, i.e. the
front-end, followed by our theoretical basis, i.e.
OKC. Next, we elaborate on our focus, i.e. feed-
back loops, followed by the critical examination
of their existing models to illustrate the gap. We
then present our methodology, followed by the
development of our model. Finally, we state our
contribution, implications, boundary conditions
and future research directions.
Context: innovations’ front-end
Innovations are defined in dierent ways. We
adopt a multidisciplinary definition of innovation:
a ‘multi-stage process whereby organizations
transform ideas into new/improved products, ser-
vice or processes [and management innovations],
in order to advance, compete and dierentiate
themselves successfully in their marketplace’
(Baregheh, Rowley and Sambrook, 2009, p. 1334).
This definition not only regards innovation as a
process as well as an outcome, but also encap-
sulates stages, nature, types, aim and the social
context of innovations. Developing innovations
within a social context, e.g. organization, makes
the process interactive, involving a complex inter-
play among various actors, with partly common
and partly conflicting interests (Fischer, 2001).
Critical to developing innovations is the front-
end. The front-end involves an innovation’s
© 2017 British Academy of Management.
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