Conceptual Issues in the Study of Innovation

This paper discusses a number of complex and currently unresolved conceptual issues arising in research on innovation in complex organizations. In an effort to link the issues they are approached through an exploration of the factors responsible for instability in empirical findings. Four separate sources of instability are defined and their theoretical and methodological implications are treated at some length. The analysis of the relative adoptability of innovations and the innovativeness of organizations are found to be related by mirror-image theoretical symmetry. The four sources of instability are seen to have the same implications for the development of a theory of adoptability. Seven prescriptions for research on innovation are suggested. Although this study suggests how one might arrive at a general theory of innovation, it does not actually construct any specific theory.