Polyphonic orchestration – facilitating creative knowledge processes for innovation

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to provide new and deeper insight into how creative knowledge processes are facilitated in multidisciplinary groups working with innovation in knowledge-intensive organizations. Design/methodology/approach - Data were collected through an ethnographic fieldwork following two groups in a Norwegian oil and gas company and one group in a Norwegian research institute working with innovation. The analysis is inductive and conducted within a qualitative framework seeking to go deeper into the complexity of the facilitation of creative knowledge processes. The analytical framework is sociocultural and underscores how new knowledge and ideas are facilitated in the tension between different voices. Findings - Analyses show how the leaders of the groups facilitated imaginative and creative processes through open dialog by giving room for diverse disciplinary knowledge and stimulating different roles in the groups. The diverse experiences of the occupational disciplines in addition to four complementary roles that ensured group dynamics, stimulated polyphony and creative tension in the groups. This creative tension enhanced the groups’ imagination, which again enabled innovative idea development. Research limitations/implications - This contribution is limited by looking at three groups in two organizations. On the premise that model generalization depends on extensive empirical data, the current paper should be considered as preliminary/exploratory research that aims at investigating how creative knowledge processes leading to innovative ideas are facilitated in knowledge-intensive organizations. Practical implications - The paper offers a practical contribution in how leaders can facilitate such creative processes leading to innovative ideas. The paper is a contribution to leadership as a relational and dialogical practice. Originality/value - The way the creative knowledge processes are orchestrated is visualized in a phase model. The paper contributes to new conceptualizations and thus theory development of leadership by offering polyphonic orchestration as a concept and a way of understanding facilitation from a sociocultural perspective.