Topic: Smuggler’s Guide to Innovation - Why and How Organizational Actors Use Clandestine Ways to Get Their Ideas Accepted in the Organization

Speaker:   Tea Lempiälä
                Aalto University, Finland

Location:   Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley (NASA Research Park Building 23) Room 118
Time:        Wednesday, February 9, 2011, 4:00pm-5:00pm
Directions: http://www.cmu.edu/silicon-valley/about-us/directions.html

Slides:      

Bio: Tea Lempiälä is a researcher and project manager at Innovation Management Institute, Aalto University, Finland. Her research examines innovation in organizations; more specifically the ways in which ideas are generated and developed collaboratively. The focus of her work is on the practices of innovation, i.e. the common patterns of action among organization members. She uses qualitative inquiry, such as observations and interviews, to tap into the micro-level practices located inside the innovation process. Tea will defend her dissertation in the summer at the School of Economics, Aalto University. The dissertation examines on the barriers of innovativeness in organization by identifying four tensions between the front stage and the backstage of innovation which pose hindrances to innovative activity. She is also managing a four-year research project examining the ways in which organizations can better support the innovativeness of their employees.