Innovative organisation as a social field: Micro-foundations of innovation

Today’s challenges companies and consequently society are faced with are directly connected with badly defined internal procedures. The required approach to change organisation’s functioning must include a proper understanding of the business and its structures as well as possible ways of innovation. Efficiency should not be seen as a set of functions, departments or products, but as a set of key business processes. Successful path that leads to creation of innovative organisations is a reorganisation of business processes from beginning to end with the use of any available innovative technologies and organisational resources. The first results of the business processes innovations have clearly refuted the initial scepticism. IBM Credit for example has reduced the time of preparing bids for the purchase or lease a computer from seven to one day, while increased the number of prepared bids by ten. Although the competition is global and the tasks are demanding, it is nevertheless crucial fact that internal social, economic, and political institutions, networks and cognitive frames become vital factors in development, and can adapt the effects of the global trends to their benefit. Systems of innovations can be defined and studied as any other social field where numerous formal and informal interactions communications between relevant institutions, networks and cognitive frames are taking place. Innovative processes are social processes and social field can enable or prevent positive responses to global challenges. As such, systems of innovations are a social infrastructure, which companies can utilise in their policy-making efforts to adapt to global trends. Organisations have to take these complex interdependency's and trends into account in formulating their strategic orientations and planning their activities. They are focused towards steering social changes. It is a never-ending activity, as the social topography of the world is continually shaping and reshaping.