This paper was presented at The XXVI ISPIM Conference – Shaping the Frontiers of Innovation

Management, Budapest, Hungary on 14-17 June 2015. The publication is available to ISPIM
members at www.ispim.org.

Empirical evidence of an innovation archetype in the

aerospace industry

Thomas Matheus*
Northumbria University, Newcastle Business School, 87 Newbridge
Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 8ST, United Kingdom.
E-mail: thomasmatheus@gmail.com

Meera Sarma
Northumbria University, Newcastle Business School, 87 Newbridge
Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 8ST, United Kingdom.
E-mail: meera.sarma@unn.ac.uk

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to empirically develop an innovation

archetype with a focus on the aerospace industry. This is important because the
existing literature reflects an absence of more holistic and integrated
frameworks explaining innovation from an archetypical perspective and in
relation to the aerospace industry. One case study, based on 19 semi-structured
interviews with a range of individuals in one aerospace organisation was
developed using naturalistic inquiry, constant comparison methods as well as
first and second order conceptions. The main outcome of this paper is an
innovation archetype of an aerospace organisation, which includes feature of
the organisational structure, the management systems and the interpretive
scheme. A practical implication of this study is that the innovation archetype
offers a good heuristic to analyse individual and all-inclusive dimensions of
innovation activities.

Keywords: Innovation; archetype; aerospace industry; case study.

1 Introduction
This study is about an organisational archetype for managing product innovation in the
aerospace industry. An organizational archetype is “a set of structures and systems that
reflects a single interpretive scheme” (Greenwood and Hinings, 1993, p. 1052). These
structures and systems are interrelated through meanings, intentions, preferences and
values. Hence, the objective identities of organisational structures and processes are
reinforced through subjective meanings. Consequently, a holistic view, which goes
beyond an analysis of structures and processes, has to be adopted in archetype research
(Brock, 2006, p. 158).
In archetype research it is important to focus on a particular industry, “because
archetypes are institutionally specific” (Cooper et al., 1996, p. 625), i.e. organisations
operating in the same industry share strategic factor markets (Barney, 1986). Specific

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 This paper was presented at The XXVI ISPIM Conference – Shaping the Frontiers of Innovation
Management, Budapest, Hungary on 14-17 June 2015. The publication is available to ISPIM
members at www.ispim.org.

industry characteristics also influence strategic decisions (Mascarenhas and Aaker, 1989)
as well as organisational aspects, e.g., culture (Gordon, 1991).
With approximately £20 billion in revenues and 150.000 employees, the
economic contribution of the British aerospace industry to the country’s GDP is
significant (ADS, 2010). Industries such as “plastics and rubber, metal, glass, textile and
electronic components” (Corallo et al., 2014, p. 151) also contribute to the aerospace
sector. Aerospace product innovations are associated with high degrees of different kinds
of risk (Altfeld, 2010). Such innovations are also highly complex systems of inter-related
components (Rosenberg, 1982, Rebolledo and Nollet, 2011). The different capabilities
required to develop, operate and maintain aerospace products are highly focused,
dissimilar and distributed across many different firms and different groups within firms
(Rebolledo and Nollet, 2011), i.e., innovations tend to occur at the ‘interstices’ of inter-
organisational networks (Powell et al., 1996). A major issue for aerospace product
development and manufacture, then, concerns the problems of incorporating and
coordinating knowledge and capabilities across intra- as well as inter-organisational
boundaries (Rebolledo and Nollet, 2011). Examples highlighting the complexities and
challenges associated with aerospace product innovations, such as the development of the
Airbus A380 (Barber, 2015) or the Airbus 400M (Hollinger and Vasagar, 2015),
frequently appear in the popular press.
To deal with the industry specific challenges, aerospace organisations adopt
certain organisational structures, use specific systems and manage their innovation-related
activities in particular ways. Based on the specific features of this industry, its economic
importance and the insights adjacent industries might gain, this paper will empirically
develop an organisational archetype for managing product innovation. This allows to
present richer and non-exclusive explanations of the management of aerospace product
innovations (based on Miller, 1981).
The structure of this paper is as follows. Initially we will review the literature
regarding organisational archetypes in innovation research and develop a theoretical
framework. Then we will explain the methodologies used and discuss the findings.
Finally, we will develop our contribution to theory and make suggestions for practice and
future research.

2 Literature review
A literature search on “innovation archetypes” yields 7 studies that explicitly link
archetypes to innovation. Innovation archetypes have been defined in different ways.
Prange and Schlegelmilch (2010, p. 46) define an innovation archetype as “a
combination of innovation strategies and operational elements that tie together to drive a
company’s innovation performance”. In contrast to this, Bessant et al. (2005, p. 1372)
define an organisational archetype for the management of continuous innovation as a
“bundle of ‘good practice’ routines”. Again, others define an innovation archetype as “a
self-reinforcing combination of culture and operations” (Pohle and Wunker, 2007, p. 1).
For the purpose of this paper we stick to the organizational archetype definition provided
above by Greenwood and Hinings (1993) and the interrelationship of the structures and
systems of an archetype through meanings, intentions, preferences and values (Brock,

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2006). This allows us to identify and flesh out the different dimensions of an
organizational archetype for managing innovation in the aerospace industry. Furthermore,
this definition provides a useful analytical heuristic for exploring structural and systemic
effects in conjunction with an interpretive scheme because, in reality, the different
dimensions of an organizational archetype are recursively intertwined.
We identified a theme about “typologies of innovation archetypes” in the
literature. In the first paper, Gassmann and Enkel (2004) identify three open innovation
process archetypes; the outside-in process, the inside-out process and the coupled process.
The second paper, a conceptual paper, explains two innovation management archetypes,
one for continuous innovation and one for discontinuous innovation. Both archetypes
comprise an interpretive scheme, suggestions for strategic decision-making and
subsequent resource allocation as well as operating routines in terms of structures and
processes (Bessant et al., 2005).
The third paper presents eight innovation archetypes. Four archetypes are
classified as exploratory innovation (i.e. visionary innovator, testing innovator, creative
innovator and technology innovator). The remaining four are classified as exploitative
innovation (i.e. consolidating innovator, traditional innovator, reliant innovator and fluid
innovator) (Prange and Schlegelmilch, 2010).
In a similar vein Pohle and Wunker (2007) identify four innovation archetypes
(i.e. the marketplace of ideas; the visionary leader; innovation through rigour; innovation
through collaboration) based on a cross-industry survey of more than 250 organisations.
These archetypes are similar to the ones suggested by Prange and Schlegelmilch (2010).
Another study contributing to the typology theme is about three proactive
strategy archetypes of innovation, i.e. opportunity-seeking prospector, market segment
securing defender, and dual-oriented analyser (Bader and Enkel, 2014), based on work by
Miles and Snow (1978). In contrast to this, Olson et al. (2005) offer four organizational
archetypes in relation to the innovation orientation of firms (i.e., management dominant,
customer-centric innovators, competitor-centric cost controllers and middle ground).
These archetypes are then related to Miles and Snow’s (1978) strategy types.
The authors of the final study in this literature review identify four archetype
users of open innovation, referred to as scouts, isolationists, explorers, and professionals.
These archetype users are differentiated based on the number of sources for open
innovation activities (referred to as breadth) and the collaboration intensity per source
(referred to as depth) of open innovation usage (Keupp and Gassmann, 2009). Based on
this literature review we developed our theoretical framework below.