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Rittblat, R. Innovation: Between Ambiguity and Clarity. Encyclopedia. Available online: https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/58761 (accessed on 05 December 2025).
Rittblat R. Innovation: Between Ambiguity and Clarity. Encyclopedia. Available at: https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/58761. Accessed December 05, 2025.
Rittblat, Rotem. "Innovation: Between Ambiguity and Clarity" Encyclopedia, https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/58761 (accessed December 05, 2025).
Rittblat, R. (2025, August 15). Innovation: Between Ambiguity and Clarity. In Encyclopedia. https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/58761
Rittblat, Rotem. "Innovation: Between Ambiguity and Clarity." Encyclopedia. Web. 15 August, 2025.
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Innovation: Between Ambiguity and Clarity
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This is a peer-reviewed entry published in Encyclopedia Journal, full entry can be found at 10.3390/encyclopedia5030123

This entry addresses the ongoing challenge of defining innovation within the social sciences, particularly in organizational theory. It conceptualizes innovation as a dynamic and embedded organizational phenomenon. Innovation is central to contemporary discourse, yet it remains fluid, contested, and context-dependent. Rather than viewing innovation as a fixed technical process, the entry examines how it emerges through shifting configurations of meaning, organizational structures and institutional environment. It draws on institutional, processual, and configurational perspectives. These perspectives emphasize the role of ambiguity and clarity as co-existing forces that shape innovation across multiple levels. The entry aims to clarify this ambiguity through a synthesis of typologies, theoretical frameworks, and empirical insights. In doing so, it offers a configurational lens on how innovation is shaped and interpreted across diverse organizational and institutional contexts.

innovation innovation typologies ambiguity and clarity configurational analysis innovation management organizational strategy institutional theory
Innovation functions simultaneously as a foundational organizational capability and as a strategic imperative [1][2]. This is reflected in recent organizational scholarship that calls for novel approaches to theorizing the future [3] and highlights innovation as a key mechanism for enabling novel forms of organizing and responding to uncertainty [4][5].
Yet despite its central role in organizational discourse, innovation remains a deeply contested and conceptually ambiguous construct. This duality—between innovation as a normative necessity and as an analytical puzzle—sits at the heart of both academic and practical discussions.
This conceptual ambiguity can be attributed to the fact that innovation is a multidimensional and nonlinear phenomenon [6][7][8][9], and has an interdisciplinary knowledge base. Innovation research spans multiple fields—including economics, management science, sociology, geography, political science, and healthcare—each contributing distinct frameworks and assumptions [10][11][12][13][14]. It also addresses both the conceptualization of innovation and the professionalization of innovation roles.
Innovation has been studied from multiple perspectives in the literature. It has been conceptualized as a process and an outcome [2][7][8], as a social construction [8], and as a paradox [13]. Scholars have also examined it as a field-level legitimation mechanism for the adoption of new practices [15], and as a strategic approach for enabling collaboration and knowledge sharing within emerging institutional forms—such as innovation platforms designed to address societal challenges [16].
Beyond academia, innovation has become a cultural ideal, symbolizing progress, creativity, and distinctiveness [17]. This symbolic weight has supported the emergence of new practices and professional roles—such as innovation experts and managers—within the institutionalization of innovation across organizations [18][19].
However, this adoption also brings tension. Innovation embodies both novelty and continuity, which can generate confusion and uncertainty. These tensions may, in turn, hinder innovation’s institutionalization within organizations [20][21].
Despite its prominence, innovation remains a vague and inconsistent concept. It is often described as a “black box” term [22], lacking a clear and shared definition [23][24]. Its meaning shifts across disciplines, fields, and institutional settings.
For example, innovation is frequently conflated with creativity, though the two are distinct [25][26]. Creativity refers to the generation of novel and valuable ideas. Innovation, by contrast, refers to the implementation of those ideas into new products, services, or practices [27]. A related confusion involves the distinction between innovation’s outcomes and its processes [23].
This entry explores the ambiguous and paradoxical nature of innovation, emphasizing how it operates both as a conceptual puzzle and a normative necessity. To unpack this complexity, I draw on the typology of theorizing approaches developed by Cornelissen, Höllerer, and Seidl (2021) [28]. Specifically, I propose the use of configurational theorizing—an approach that examines how multiple concepts or constructs combine into distinct configurations that explain why and how innovation occurs [28] (p. 8) [29].
From this perspective, innovation should not be treated as an in isolated or singular concept. Instead, it emerges from the interplay between configurations of meaning, organizational structure, and institutional environment.
Defining innovation more precisely is essential—not only to clarify scholarly assumptions, but also to ground innovation research in specific contexts [30]. This, in turn, enhances our understanding of how innovation emerges, evolves, and becomes institutionalized.
Moreover, defining innovation matters conceptually, because it captures the interplay between change and continuity; practically, because it influences how firms, governments, and societies respond to uncertainty; and scholarly, because it is central to how we study transformation, creativity, and institutional change.
Yet, precisely because of its popularity, innovation risks becoming a vague placeholder—obscuring more than it reveals. This entry responds by shifting the focus toward how ambiguity and clarity coexist within institutional and organizational configurations.
Similarly, Splitter et al. (2023) [31] discussed “openness” not as the opposite of closure, but as an organizing principle built on the productive tension between ambiguity and structure (p. 7). Their analysis of open innovation, platforms, and government shows that openness functions within—rather than against—institutional constraints.
In parallel, this entry argues that innovation is not clarified by eliminating ambiguity, but by configuring it—translating institutional multiplicity and organizational complexity into situated forms of clarity.
This reflects March’s (1991) [32] classic distinction between exploration, which thrives on uncertainty and experimentation, and exploitation, which values efficiency, coherence, and clarity. Innovation, situated between these poles, draws its power from their tension: ambiguity fuels novelty, while clarity anchors outcomes.
O’Reilly and Tushman (2013) [33] expanded this view through the concept of organizational ambidexterity—the ability to pursue exploration and exploitation simultaneously. They argued that innovation success depends on managing the tension between ambiguity and clarity, by building structures and leadership that support both flexibility and control. In this way, ambidexterity becomes a practical expression of the configurational nature of innovation.
The entry is structured as follows. First, it introduces the key concepts, definitions, and typologies that shaped current understandings of innovation. Next, it reviews dominant theoretical perspectives and examine how they engage with complexity. It then presents a configurational approach to innovation, supported by the figure and table in the manuscript, which illustrate how ambiguity and clarity interact across different innovation types and contexts. Finally, the entry concludes by identifying key research gaps and outlining future directions for advancing a more situated and dynamic understanding of innovation.

References

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Subjects: Management
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Book: Encyclopedia of Social Sciences
Online Date: 15 Aug 2025
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