How do Organisations link Innovation and Strategic Renewal? A Social-Practice Perspective

One of the fundamental challenges facing established organisations is how to renew their strategy in order to prosper and grow. Strategic renewal has been defined in many ways but at its core it involves the transformation of the organisation’s capabilities that can reposition the firm in terms of its market or product mix which ultimately develops new markets or industries (Ramirez and Wallin, 1999). One source of strategic renewal that tends to be underplayed in the literature is innovation. Whilst the literature sometimes associates the concepts of innovation and strategic renewal (Floyd & Lane, 2000), it rarely analyzes how they relate to each other. We have addressed this gap through co-research with senior executives, reviewing literature and undertaking case studies of European-based firms in non-competing industrial sectors, as well as a number of practitioner workshops. This paper is based on the first 18 months of the research.