and the observations we make in the environment researched. All research is a by-product of a researcher's interactions within not only the site of research but also his/her interactions within his/her community of scholars and practitioners.
Let us embrace the understanding that there is no reality waiting to be discovered and there is no possibility of a neutral and objective researcher who – with the right tools and methods – will discover how things really are. Let us also invite the radical position that research is an opportunity for innovation and that innovation is embraced by adopting the ideas of multiple truths, multiple realities, and multiple methods for exploring those constructed realities. If we embrace these proposals, we become curious about what sorts of worlds can be made possible through particular forms of research. Our focus is on relational processes that construct our worlds and this is understood as something very different from a focus on discovering how the world (really) is and (really) functions.
The focus on relational processes is the hallmark of a constructionist orientation (Gergen, 2009). This focus represents a shift from examining entities (whether they be individuals, groups, organizations, or physical matter) to attending to what we refer to as language or language processes. Language, to the constructionist, is much more than words or text; it entails all embodied activity. In addition, language is viewed as not simply representing reality. Rather, language is seen as constructing reality. What we do together actually makes our social worlds. Meaning emerges in the interplay of people engaging with each other. And, different communities, groups, and cultures can rightfully negotiate very different meanings and thus live in very different realities. This acknowledgment of diverse meanings, collaboratively negotiated within different communities, is an acknowledgment of the complexity of the world we inhabit. Through innovative research, we can better understand how such realities are created. We can also collaborate with communities who are dissatisfied with their constructed social order to create new possibilities. This understanding invites a deconstruction of our accepted, dominant view of research. In other words, it suggests that we ask: How else might we imagine research? How do we conceptualize what research is when we start from the position of seeing research – like any other interaction – as a collaboratively constructed process?
The questions we ask focus our attention on the implications – or unintended consequences – of our communally constructed worlds. And, it is this attention to what our meanings make possible (or impossible) that is critical for constructionist researchers. The attention is not on proving anything to be right or wrong, but on exploring the implications of stepping into and embracing any particular truth. A researcher's curiosity about the very different worlds/realities/truths of different communities makes it possible to see the ‘local coherence’ for each group. Thus, as we can see, the philosophical stance of social construction helps us shift our thinking from a view of research as a process of discovery to a view of research as a process of innovation. It offers an appealing new story about what counts as research and how to engage multiple voices, methods, and priorities in ways that are creative and innovative.
Research as Innovation
There is an extensive literature illustrating innovation in research. Yet, most of this literature focuses on ‘research in innovation’, ‘research and innovation’, or ‘research for innovation’ (Audretsch et al., 2019; Hjalager, 2010; Mazzucato, 2018; Ray and Street, 2005; Stilgoe et al., 2013). Less common is the sense of research as innovation, which is what we are proposing here.
Innovation is a way of describing research as creating possibilities, or, as Callon (1987) proposes, innovation is ‘society in the making’. This requires a level of sensing and presence from the researcher; a quality of attention to what is happening moment by moment in order to see what was unseen before. Creativity and imagination are core in research; they allow researchers to tap into the unknown. This differs from traditional forms of research where we often see researchers employing the same categories, instruments, and research questions that predecessors have employed. In other words, innovation is the generation of new meanings through critical examination of our assumptions about the phenomena (Mars, 2013) and what counts as data, what counts as analysis of that data, and the unfolding implications of our research (Alvesson and Sandberg, 2012).
Research as innovation centers on an intrinsic collaborative process among researchers and research participants in which information, observations, and other ‘data’ are shared, taking into consideration various vantage points, combining different perspectives and voices, inviting reorganization, reframing, and including alternative contexualizations as the research process unfolds. The expansion and generation of new meanings (traditionally identified as findings) is a process of innovation in the sense that opportunities for engagement with the topic and possibilities for change are amplified. The ‘intervention’ or transformation, from this perspective, occurs when multiple understandings invite a community to begin to question their taken-for-granted ways of being.
Research Practices that Invite Innovation
In the remainder of this chapter, we offer some illustrations of research approaches/practices that invite innovation by embracing relationality and participation, thereby enhancing creativity and imagination in research processes as well as the results of our research. Of course, the range of available practices is limitless. Here, we focus on some practices that have been gaining broader acceptance over the past few decades: Imagineering, arts-based research, and appreciative inquiry.
Imagineering
Imagineering is a design methodology inspired by complexity theory and systems thinking (Nijs, 2019). It focuses on the principles and processes of living systems, where concern is with self-organizing life forms and the ways in which they interact with their environment (Banathy, 1996). Thus, emergence, interdependence and non-linear, open relations become central (Corning, 2012; Cross, 2006). The Imagineering design methodology follows these principles, looking at organization and society from a more complex, interconnected and non-linear perspective. It also focuses on generating high concepts, which are concepts borrowed from the movie industry. Here, producers create a short, easy to communicate narrative, linking the story with an appealing invitation that aims to foster the collective creativity of the audience when engaging with a certain leisure activity. The Imagineering design approach borrows this idea of creating a generative image or a powerful word with the goal of provoking a creative tension that results in reframing meanings and bringing forth a new perspective about a topic or a system. That can be called a Creative Tension Engine. Creative tension is defined by Senge et al. (2015) as the bridge between the actual reality and the future that is to be created. Thus, the high concept, or also called Creative Tension Engine, focuses on designing generative images that provoke a creative tension where new meanings can emerge and new realities can be created.
The Imagineering approach to research is focused on promoting emergence more than theoretical knowledge, itself. Emergence refers to a process or a phenomenon in which new patterns are formed as a result of local interactions, thereby forming new realities (Lichtenstein, 2014). In the context of Imagineering, Nijs (2019) refers to ‘emergence by design’. The focus is on interactive approaches where the dialogue among participants initiates emergent processes that facilitate self-organization in a system, thereby generating new possibilities and directions. The research path follows a design cycle of three steps with two phases each.
One example is a research project developed in the context of libraries in the Netherlands (Nijs and Terzieva, 2015). Libraries have been struggling with their traditional role in society. Today, most people do not use libraries to access books and information. Instead, they draw upon new technologies to access and interact with knowledge. In an attempt to face this challenge, seven libraries from North Brabant, the Netherlands invited Imagineering researchers to investigate the topic and come up with possible solutions (Nijs and Terzieva, 2015).
The
