4. Understanding Organizational Innovation from Its Practice

Organizational innovation is studied as an important source of competitive advantage both for firms and for territories. This relevance is related to the widening of the innovation concept, which is no longer limited to technology. However, the concept of organizational innovation is still considered ambiguous, and even the Oslo Manual recognizes that its referential definition is still at an exploratory level. The analysis of organizational innovation has been made further methodologically challenging by the fact that innovation processes are no longer understood as linear and predictive, but complex and variable. It follows that new studies and methods are required if we are to acquire a deeper knowledge of organizational innovation practices and their consequences for competitiveness. Consequently, this research has aimed to achieve a thorough understanding of how an organizational innovation process is developed and understood in practice; and to generate new theoretical insights about such processes for guiding future research. Grounded theory has been used as a suitable methodology for this inductive, longitudinal, field-based case study research. Already, preliminary results have helped us gain new theoretical insights about the suitability of the Oslo Manual’s definition in practice and about the value of the application of an innovation generation and adoption process perspective to the study of organizational innovation. Work is still in-progress to consolidate first results, to guarantee their confirmability and to facilitate their transfer.