ABSTRACT
A great deal of innovation activity and its success is contingent on effective collaboration between departments in organisations. This chapter reports on a case study of innovation. It investigates a project to upgrade existing industrial test facilities, and illustrates one of the essential points of this book, namely that the structure of the innovation process has changed from planning and hierarchy to strategic reflexivity in social interaction. By using a qualitative, interpretative method, the underlying quality dimension of the innovation process was elicited from participant actors. These were categorised into three groups in terms of centrality vis-à-vis the innovation process, namely into struggling, instrumental and concerned actors. We argue that by using qualitative approaches to unravel key interand intraorganisational innovation obstacles, management can become more aware of how different quality dimensions connect during innovation work and are then able to allocate resources according to a clear set of priorities.
