Increasing the Odds of Maneuvering the Innovation Journey

Deceased

The essay reflects the co-authors’ different academic and managerial views. We worked together on several innovations studied at the 3M Company in the 1980’s. During that time William Coyne was 3M’s Group Vice President of Health Care and sponsored studies of several innovations at 3M. Andrew Van de Ven was research professor at the University of Minnesota, and directly involved in tracking the innovations at 3M with several PhD students (notably Raghu Garud and Douglas Polley). We appreciate the invitation from Jeffrey Reuer and Joseph Mahoney for the opportunity to write this joint academic-practitioner essay for Strategic Management Review. In doing so, Van de Ven covered the academic research literature, while Coyne provided “color commentary” by sharing his insights and experiences from his career of managing innovation.

The SMR editor suggested we add a footnote discussing the process of preparing this coauthored article. As a practitioner, Bill observed that, “through several months of discussions we were able to combine well researched and documented data with observational facts that support the former from a practitioners’ point of view. I believe we came up with a more readable and actionable essay by reinforcing the message this way. We learned from each other through the dialogue.” Andy agrees, saying that, “our discussions provided a wonderful way to connect the general case from afar (research data) with particular up-close instances and examples of Bill’s observation and experiences. It seems to provide a good way to integrate academic theory and management practice.” Bill responded, “Yes, definitely!”