Innovation theory and the logic of generativity: from optimization to design, a new post-decisional paradigm in management science

Abstract : In this paper we contribute to show that innovation theory can today strongly contribute to the (re)foundation of management. Innovation theory is teared apart between the historical optimal-decision-making paradigm and the new perspective on creation. Still contemporary advances in design theory provide an integrated framework that accounts for decision andcreation, their similarities and differences, and enables to introduce a relativity principle, the unknown (or the expected generativity), to account for the continuity from one activity to the other. We show how applying that general framework and that relativity principle can help extend decision-based models (decision under uncertainty, problem solving, combinatorics) and how this extension helps revisit basic managerial notions built on these models (risk management, knowledge management, coordination…). We conclude on some of the perspectives opened by this relativity principle for management.