Patterns of Uncertainty and Equivocality during Predevelopment : Findings from Process‐Based Firms

• Previous literature suggests that innovation managers should prioritize uncertainty reduction in early phases of innovation projects. When uncertainty is high, the general prediction is negative consequences in the form of time‐delays, waste of resources, unclear team vision and, ultimately, concept failure. There are strong reasons to believe, however, that simultaneous management of equivocality is equally important, but this concept has largely been neglected in previous research. By means of a case‐study relying upon exploratory interviews addressing unique observations of 58 innovation projects, we notice that the perhaps most significant challenge for being successful or not is not the initial levels of uncertainty. Rather, it is managerial attempts to actively fight for reducing uncertainty but also addressing the equivocality dimension in the pre‐development stages of the innovation process. We observe reduced patterns of uncertainty and equivocality in successful product innovation and process innovation projects in pre‐development stages. This was not the case for unsuccessful projects. Similarly, we find significantly lower levels of equivocality for successful projects, which is a contribution to prior research suggesting that uncertainty is the major concern during predevelopment. Moreover, our results show that perceived patterns of uncertainty and equivocality differ between product innovation and process innovation projects in different sub‐phases of pre‐development. Key results are summarized as propositions which not only provide guidance for future research, but also provide direct managerial implications on how to address uncertainty and equivocality in different sub‐phases of predevelopment.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business (hsv//eng)

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Annan teknik -- Övrig annan teknik (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Other Engineering and Technologies -- Other Engineering and Technologies not elsewhere specified (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

predevelopment

innovation

fuzzy front end

product development

Business and economics

Ekonomi

Entreprenörskap och innovation

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)