Getting New Things Done

Our networks-and how we work them-create vital ties that bind. Organizations recognize and reward this fact by leaning ever more heavily on collaboration, particularly when it comes to getting new things done. This book offers a framework that explains how innovators use network processes to broker knowledge and mobilize action.

How well they do so directly influences the outcome of attempts to innovate, especially when a project is not tied to prescribed organizational routines. An entrepreneur launches a business. A company rolls out a new product line. Two firms form a partnership. These instances and many more like them dot today's business landscape. And yet, we understand little about the social dimension of these undertakings. Disentangling brokerage from network structure and building on his theoretical work regarding tertius iungens, David Obstfeld explains how actors with diverse interests, expertise, and skills leverage their personal and intellectual connections to create new ventures and products with extraordinary results.

Autorentext
David Obstfeld is Associate Professor of Management in The Mihaylo College of Business and Economics at California State University, Fullerton. His research examines knowledge-intensive, network-based social processes that result in organizational change and innovation. Previously, he served as Director of Training and Development at The Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae).

Inhalt
Contents and Abstracts Introduction chapter abstract
The Introduction provides an overview of the book's action model. Actors engage in specific social processes to mobilize networks and knowledge to drive both organizational innovation and growth, and many other efforts to get new things done. Innovation takes both more-routine and nonroutine forms, and a particular form of nonroutine action, the creative project, is emphasized as an undertheorized source of innovation in the modern world. Innovation, at the individual level, has four key explanatory variables: (1) brokerage network structure; (2) brokerage processthe action by which a strategic actor leverages his or her network; (3) the strategic actor's stock of knowledge, whether rooted in experience or education; and (4) the strategic actor's knowledge articulation skill with which he or she communicates that knowledge for the purposes of engaging or enlisting others. The BKAP model (Brokerage, Knowledge Articulation, Projects) is introduced. 1 Brokerage in Action chapter abstract
This chapter addresses social network structure and process to explain how brokerage functions to get new things done. First, innovative action is described as often unfolding in triads through brokerage. Second, the chapter explains how network structure sets the context for action, emphasizing the distinction between open and closed social network structures. Third, the chapter distinguishes between brokerage as action and brokerage as structure. Fourth, the chapter considers the brokerage process, first by defining it and then by proposing three fundamental brokerage orientations or behaviors: conduit, tertius gaudens, and tertius iungens. Finally, the chapter revisits Fligstein's idea of social skill, or the ability to induce cooperation, to argue that inducing cooperation to get new things done is achieved by strategically combining the three brokerage orientations toward action. 2 Knowledge Articulation chapter abstract
This chapter examines the essential role of knowledge articulation in enabling brokers to mobilize and coordinate others' actions to get new things done. First, the chapter examine the tacit/explicit conceptualization of knowledge and its implications for knowledge articulation. Second, the chapter revisits Carlile's 3T model (knowledge transfer, knowledge translation, and knowledge transformation) and how it bridges between brokerage and knowledge articulation. Third, the chapter focuses on three initially dyadic processes for articulating knowledge: mutual intelligibility, persuasion, and enlistment. Then the chapter turns to ethnographic data to illustrate knowledge articulation in terms of five practices or communicative dimensions: moving between back stage and front stage; moving between complex and simple; moving among the past, present, and future; balancing familiarizing and defamiliarizing; and establishing credibility by laying down markers. Finally, the chapter revisits the relationship between brokerage processes and knowledge articulation in getting new things done. 3 Creative Projects chapter abstract
A theory of the creative projectthe underexamined, nonroutine trajectory for getting new things doneis the focus of this chapter. First, the chapter draws on insights from pragmatist philosophy with respect to the interplay of routine and nonroutine action. Next, the chapter summarizes the organizational literature's treatment of routine and nonroutine innovative action and their expression in the learning-curve construct. The chapter next introduces a conceptual framework for action trajectories in project-based and routine-based innovation. The chapter then explores the role of brokerage and knowledge articulation in creative projects. This is followed by a brief examination of meta-routines and meta-trajectories. Next, the chapter provides exploratory criteria for making distinctions between innovation in creative projects and innovation in organizational routines. Finally, the chapter concludes with a hypothetical case of the Apple Watch to illustrate the concepts introduced here. 4 Mobilizing for Routine-based Innovation: NewCar's Manual Shifter Redesign Initiative</span...