Making change happen: focusing on realizing a mind-shift[PhD Diane Nijs, 13 February]

‘Making change happen’ is an important challenge strategists face today. Not only do many of our organizations need change, whole industries and systems need to transform in order to survive and thrive in the connected society. In this study the complexity-based design approach of imagineering is presented and evaluated on its effectiveness in realizing organizational innovation in a sustainable way.

The method approaches organizational change as an emerging process of self-organization. By redesigning the business conception in the narrative mode a kind of bottom-up revitalizing process is effectuated that ignites the collective creativity of involved stakeholders in a strategic envisioned direction.

Instead of focusing on changing behavior conventional change-methods do, the method focuses on realizing a mind-shift in order to effectuate ‘transformation by inspiration’. The effectiveness of the method is evaluated in predominantly two cases over a period of approximately ten years: the case of the city of Antwerp and the case of the oldest Belgian retail-chain Veritas.

Based on the insights gained from this study, the author reflects on the implications of the imagineering design method on four fields of study: the field of transformative organizing, the field of strategic thinking, the field of design thinking in management and the field of management education.

Diane Nijs conducted her research at the FEB, financed by NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences. She will be awarded her PhD on Thursday 13 February 2014 (14.30h). Thesis supervidor is prof.dr. J.M.L. van Engelen. Thesis title: Het imagineeren van het 'butterfly-effect': complexiteit en collectieve creativiteit bij bedrijven en overheden.