ABSTRACT
Innovation management approaches are evolving to enable organisations to respond to an increasingly changeable environment. Contemporary methods such as agile project management, design thinking, and lean startup approaches offer ‘new ways of working’ that promote iteration over up-front planning to support innovation in dynamic times. A growing stream of research suggests that effectuation, a decision logic first observed in entrepreneurship, may provide a ‘new way of thinking’ to support these contemporary approaches for innovation management. Effectuation is also proposed to offer competitive advantages for organisational innovation by acting as a dynamic capability, improving organisational ambidexterity, and facilitating strategy emergence. Organisations may achieve benefits by developing managers’ awareness of effectuation and their abilities to apply it effectively; however, further research is needed to better understand the ways the relatively recent concept of effectuation can assist organisations manage contemporary innovation.
