research@hec - Issue #25 - (Page IV)

research Increase innovativeness By shaping managerial perceptions of their environments Business environments evolve quickly and constantly. But how exactly do changes in technologies, demand, or regulatory rules lead to the development of new and his at times surprising findings, the answer is multidimensional. products? What triggers corporate innovativeness? According to Nils Plambeck hec Nils Plambeck BIOGRAPHY “I was interested in finding out what triggers innoHEC professor of strategy and business policy Nils Plambeck’s primary research interests are the determinants and consequences of cognition in an organizational context. Plambeck earned his doctorate and a Diploma Kaufmann with a focus on strategy and sociology from the University of Hamburg. THINKING NEGATIVELY LEADS TO LESS INNOVATIVE PRODUCTS Plambeck explains that when a manager evaluates a change to the industry environment in a negative light, they are assessing this event as likely to lead vation,” says researcher Nils Plambeck. “Given that this process would not work the same way for everyone, I knew I had to approach the question from an interpretive or cognitive angle.” Plambeck’s next question was thus, what kind of managerial perspectives inspire innovativeness? “We know from former research that negative emotions are the kind that most often elicit action, because they signal a need for change, yet, in spite of this, negative cognition receives only limited attention in previous research on entrepreneurship. So I chose to make the role of negativity in innovation a key focus of my study.” It also occurred to Plambeck that how managers see the world is very much driven by the organization in which she finds herself; in other words, organizational context is likely to influence the degree to which managers negatively interpret industry events. “I took an integrated approach to the phenomenon, exploring the interplay between managerial negativity and firm context, investigating how each separately and also jointly influences entrepreneurial activity.” to losses for the company; put another way, managers with negative perceptions of triggering events feel threatened. Previous research shows that when threatened, decision-makers tend to seek less information, or information that is already familiar to them, making them less likely to seek out the kind of new information that will lead to the development of more innovative products. Hence, Plambeck’s hypothesis: the more negative a manager’s perceptions of the trigger event, the less innovative the resulting product. Ultimately, Plambeck’s findings confirm that negative interpretation of a trigger event is associated with products that are less innovative. Armed with this new insight, how can leaders practically control for cognition in innovation? The first step is identifying the factors that influence the negativity of managerial perceptions. FIRM STRATEGY INFLUENCES HOW MANAGERS SEE THE WORLD In his research, Plambeck distinguishes between more defensive firm strategies, characterized by a focus on maintaining market position, and more offensive firm strategies, characterized by a constant search to capitalize on new opportunities, with the goal of investigating a potential correlation between degree of firm defensiveness and negativity of managerial response to industry change. Ultimately Plambeck confirms that more defensive IV research@hec • February - March 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of research@hec - Issue #25

Cover & Contents
Capitalism in the face of the ecological crisis
Increase innovativeness by shaping managerial perceptions of their environments
Europe and business law: Still far from complete harmonization
HEC Paris News

research@hec - Issue #25