Supporting organizing for disruptive innovation in an incumbent organization in real-time

This article contributes to underdeveloped research methods for studying innovation processes in real-time by exploring how organizing for disruptive innovation in an incumbent organization can be supported through real-time investigation. Embracing an ethnographic engaged scholarship approach, we worked with participants at Thales UK , a leading multinational technology company, over a period of 3 years to explore how an incumbent organization organizes for disruptive innovation from an organization-creation perspective. We show how our collaborative research practices supported the development of disruptive opportunities in their emergence by stimulating self-reflexivity and imagination among organizational members. Our reflexive analysis illustrates how we accomplished this through a process of simultaneous intervention and observation, action and analysis, and iteratively moving in and out between micro and macro levels of engagement with our study context. We present our findings in the form of a confessional tale highlighting both the impacts and tensions of engaging with our research context in a multidimensional and responsive manner. We seek to bridge theory and practice of innovation processes through our engaged scholarship approach and by sharing our research experience as a toolkit for other researchers to also study and contribute to the emergence of innovation processes in organizations in real-time."