S&O Research Seminar - December 2020

The S&O Institute and the HEC Strategy and Business Policy Department are happy to invite you to their joint research seminar on December 8th from 2.30 pm to 4.00 pm by zoom. 

We have a great pleasure to welcome two remarkable guest speakers Simone Ferriani, Professor of Entrepreneurship at the University of Bologna and Gino Cattani, Professor of Management and Organizations at NYU Stern. Simone and Gino have put together an innovative form of presentation in which they will trace their joint intellectual/collaborative journey across key ideas and then spend some time on their latest project: The Legitimation Journey of Novelty (the summary is here after) followed by questions and answers.

Speakers: Simone Ferriani and Gino Cattani

Title: The Legitimation Journey of Novelty

Summary

It is well known even intuitively that novelties destined to subvert the established way of doing things in a given world are often pushed forward by innovators who reside at the periphery of – and at times even outside – that world. The journey of novelty from the margins to the core is as captivating as it is troubling to decode. On the one hand, peripheral innovators stand apart from the norms of their eras. Being less tied to
the conventions to which insiders tend to conform, they may recognize solutions that escape incumbents’ attention. Yet the paradox is that the same social position that helps peripherals to pursue imaginative projects that depart from prevailing social and cognitive categories also constrains their ability to obtain support and recognition for their innovations: they lack crucial markers of credibility, social ties to insiders, and most notably, expert authority. What processes allow peripheral actors to stake out some ground in the insiders’ own terrain, especially when their claims to novelty clash with the status quo? Our goal in this talk is to offer an overview of some of the central theoretical and analytical insights we have been developing in our attempt at decoding the journey of novelty. After sharing some central findings of our collaborative research, we will conclude by presenting one project currently in progress that focuses on micro mechanisms of novelty framing based on an experimental approach.

For Registration, please contact Iiris Sacchet: sacchet@hec.fr