Convenor
Convenor's affiliation
Antoine Bordas
Mines Paris
Co-convenors
Gouthanan Pushpananthan, Ludvig Lindlof, Fabio Gama
Abstract
Emerging technologies such as generative AI or autonomous systems introduce new forms of generativity, namely the capacity to produce unexpected, evolving, and self-propagating outcomes. These technologies challenge conventional management approaches. They do so by producing outcomes that cannot be fully anticipated or predefined, thereby undermining the assumptions of stability, linearity and alignment theorized in traditional management and innovation literature. Importantly, the emergence of AI provides new challenges on, for instance, how can organizations manage generative technologies? What practices, processes and structures enable organisations to leverage generative technologies? This track explores how organisations understand, design, and manage generativity as a new condition for creativity and transformation. We invite theoretical, empirical, and design-oriented contributions examining how generativity reshapes organisational creativity, learning, and strategy. The track aims to bring together researchers studying the creative, organisational, and epistemic implications of generative technologies.
Description
Digitalisation has transformed the way organisations innovate, yet a new phase is unfolding, one that is characterised not merely by automation or connectivity, but by generativity. Generative technologies, including GenAI, synthetic biology, computational design, and adaptive systems, create artefacts, knowledge, and possibilities that evolve autonomously and perpetually. These technologies are not only tools or enablers; they are complex systems, capable of evolving autonomously and reconfiguring the very environments in which they operate (Thomas & Tee, 2022).
This shift challenges traditional managerial models founded on prediction, control, and eRiciency. Managing innovation in generative contexts requires new forms of creativity, coordination, and learning (Haefner et al., 2021). Organisations must adapt themselves to leverage technologies that function autonomously, adapt through feedback, and reshape the boundaries between research, design, and development. The focus is no longer on optimising processes, but on managing the dynamics of emergence, creating conditions in which novel and valuable outcomes can continuously arise.
This track invites scholars to explore how generativity, widely acknowledged as a characteristic of technologies, organisations, and ecosystems, reshapes the foundations of creativity, innovation and management. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
• Organisational responses to generativity: from control to orchestration, from optimisation to exploration.
• Organisational routines and structures for exploring open-ended creative spaces.
• Design approaches for managing generative processes involving human and nonhuman agents.
• Learning, evaluation and decision-making when engaging with generative technologies.
• Case studies of how organisations engage with GenAI or other generative technologies to identify new forms of creativity and coordination.
We particularly welcome interdisciplinary approaches drawing on management studies, design theory and innovation lenses, provided it focuses on the organisational management of generativity. Methodologically, we encourage case studies, experiments, modelling approaches and conceptual contributions.By focusing on managing generativity, this track seeks to articulate a new paradigm for R&D and innovation management, one that recognises creativity as a distributed, evolving, and emergent process (Ferrigno et al., 2023). It aims to gather a community of scholars and practitioners exploring how organisations can design for the unknown, sustain creative openness, and engage productively with the generative forces that shape contemporary technologies and futures.