Accelerating the Innovation Process: A Systematic Review and Realist Synthesis of the Research Literature

Abstract

There is continued interest among academics, practitioners and policy‐makers in methods to achieve accelerated innovation. Academic studies of this complex phenomenon have succeeded in reaching a high degree of consensus on the antecedents of innovation speed. The aim in this review is to elucidate further the mechanisms underlying management interventions to promote speed. The review adopts a theory‐led, realist synthesis of innovation speed research – the first example of this methodology in management studies. The authors develop a new time‐based framework for categorizing the innovation‐speed literature. The framework has a CIMO logic, and is built by invoking the organizational studies literature on time. The authors contextualize the innovation‐speed literature in relation to the three generic temporal challenges faced by all organizations: reducing temporal uncertainty; resolving temporal conflicts over activities; and allocating resources amid conditions of temporal scarcity. They problematize extant explanations of innovation speed as not taking account of different temporal orientations (temporal dichotomies) within innovation work, and thereby neglecting a potential barrier to achieving accelerated innovation outcomes. They further draw on the literature on time in organizations to suggest new avenues of research, and methodological approaches new to the study of innovation speed. The principal contribution of this review is to offer a new conceptual perspective on the complex empirical research examining how innovation projects may be accelerated from original idea to launch.

The “realist search”: A systematic scoping review of current practice and reporting

“…We included a total of 35 studies in our sample . Most papers reported a single realist review (27 of 35).…”

“…Most papers reported a single realist review (27 of 35). Fewer papers reported a multicomponent review that include a realist review component (n = 5) or a rapid realist review (n = 3) . We identified different models of searching from examining the overall purpose and scope of the reported searches (Table ).…”

University ownership and information about the entrepreneurial opportunity in commercialisation: a systematic review and realist synthesis of the literature

“…Realist synthesis enables us to review the literature on complex social systems, and affords us a theory-driven approach to the evaluation of published work as it identifies the underlying factors that characterise problems and influence the outcome of interventions (Pawson et al 2005). Thus, it encompasses three stages: i) the identification/creation of an initial theoretical construct/framework, ii) the conduct of the literature search, and iii) refining the theoretical constructs/framework taking into account the research results obtained in the papers reviewed (Ellwood et al 2017).…”

“…is not uncommon in papers that use a realist synthesis approach, often identifying as many (Ellwood et al 2017;Holkeri, 2019) or even more (Westhorp et al 2014) from snowballing as from the original search. The final limitation relates to the scope of literature search as only the reference lists of articles, which were already identified as relevant, were looked at.…”

“…The search could have been extended by including the articles, which are citing these identified papers. Our aim was, however, to locate quite specific papers, and it is an accepted practice to extend the literature search by means of snowballing using already selected papers as a starting point (Ellwood et al 2017).…”