Where to from here? A note from the new editorial team

It is a time of transition at Innovation: Organization and Management. After five busy years as co-editor of the journal, Markus Perkmann stepped down on December 31, 2021. Markus was a driving force in the creation of the journal and his wisdom and insight were key to the new name and new editorial direction of the journal (as well as the choice of the distinctive orange cover!). These changes have been more successful than he and Nelson ever imagined when they first started talking with Taylor & Francis about re-launching the journal. Markus has much to be proud of in terms of his contribution to the development and success of Innovation: Organization and Management. On behalf of the entire IOM community, thank you Markus for all your hard work and commitment!

At the same time, another stalwart of the team has stepped down from her role. Donna Sutherland-Smith has been a steady hand in the editorial office since Markus and Nelson took over the journal and she has managed to keep them organized and the journal running smoothly. But her contribution went far beyond simply running the editorial office, and her ability to engage effectively with authors, publishers and the editorial board to manage the myriad of problems that arise when dealing with hundreds of manuscripts will be sorely missed. Once again, on behalf of the entire IOM community, thank you Donna for all your hard work and commitment!

We would also like to announce that Llewellyn Thomas has joined the editorial team as co-editor in chief. Llewellyn is a faculty member at IESE in Barcelona, Spain and brings deep knowledge of innovation and entrepreneurship to the team. He has published widely including papers in Innovation: Organization and Management (e.g. Leiponen, Thomas, & Wang, 2021). Perhaps most importantly, he brings a fresh perspective to the journal and has several interesting ideas for new things we can do at the journal that we will be working on over the coming months.

The change in leadership at the journal also gives us a chance to think about new strategic directions for the journal. While the journal has been doing very well in terms of submissions and impact, we believe there is still much more runway for improvement. We are going to begin with three initiatives that we believe will contribute significantly to the growth of IOM.

1) Broaden the innovation horizon. The technological frontier is constantly evolving, with new technologies creating new opportunities for innovation and significantly changing the innovation process. For instance, the generativity of digital infrastructures, platforms and ecosystems is changing innovation for both individuals and organizations (Thomas & Tee, 2021; Zittrain, 2006). Digital ledger technology and its applications such as bitcoin and NFTs (non-fungible tokens) are challenging our understanding of what innovation is and how it should be managed (Leiponen et al., 2021; Lumineau, Wang, & Schilke, 2020). Artificial intelligence and machine learning are, on the one hand, innovative technologies that reshapes companies and how innovation management is organized (Haefner, Wincent, Parida, & Gassmann, 2021), as well as offering theoretically interesting approaches for empirically driven innovation research (cf. Leavitt, Schabram, Hariharan, & Barnes, 2021). As such we will be encouraging both conceptual and empirical research that makes a novel theoretical contribution to our understanding of the impact of these new technologies.

2) Seek out review articles that advance theoretical understanding. Markus and Nelson decided early on to focus on theory papers and articles that made a novel empirical contribution. This meant that review articles were not a priority and we only published a few (e.g. Lyytinen, 2021). At the same time, review articles are playing a larger and larger role in our field. Several journals including the Journal of Management have annual special issues devoted to reviews while the Academy of Management Annals has become one of the premier journals in our field only publishing reviews. We therefore believe it is time for us to actively seek review articles that fit with the journal mission to extend our theoretical understanding of innovation in and around organizations. We will therefore be issuing a call for review papers to encourage this type of submission and hopefully increase the number of high-quality review articles that we publish. We encourage anyone with an idea for a review paper to get in touch and we will be happy to discuss.

3) Formalize the special issue process. While special issues have been an integral part of IOM since the re-launch, we have been quite informal in terms of the process through which SIs have been selected. Generally, we were reactive and simply responded whenever a potential editorial team contacted us. We are now going to move to a much more proactive approach and develop a formal process for interested potential special issue editors to submit proposals and publish at least one special issue per year. We will promote the new process and make all proposals due on the same date each year to facilitate reviewing and selecting the best proposals. So, if you have an idea for a special issue, please do consider submitting a proposal once the process is up and running.

At the same time, our fundamental purpose will stay the same. Innovation: Organization & Management will remain the premier journal for high quality papers at the intersection of innovation and organization theory. We will continue to focus primarily on conceptual and empirical articles that make a novel theoretical contribution, but with the addition of an increased number of review articles. Furthermore, we will continue to work to build a community around this important area of scholarship.

That’s it for now. As always, feel free to contact us anytime if you have ideas, suggestions, or concerns. The journal exists to support the community of scholars working in this area and we always love to hear from you (even if it is a complaint!). We look forward to seeing everyone at the next editorial board meeting in Seattle.