Abstract
What do penicillin, artificial intelligence applications such as ChatGPT, and many articles published in Organization Studies have in common? They are the outcomes of processes of discovery. Discovery underpins many things that we use and do in our everyday lives. It could even be seen as the most important driver of human progress. In organization studies, it matters for phenomena such as organizational change and innovation. Despite its ubiquity, however, the process of discovery is poorly understood, often relegated either to serendipitous events or to genius minds.
In her book, Karen Golden-Biddle provides insights into the impediments and mechanisms that underpin processes of discovery in organizations. Key to her argument is that discovery requires changes in beliefs. At the heart of her book is an iterative cycle that starts from established beliefs, and then engages three ‘motors’ that propel the discovery process forward: (a) ‘capitalizing on surprises’, (b) ‘harnessing genuine doubts’ about current beliefs and (c) ‘launching new ways’. She suggests that ‘without engaging all three motors – once, twice, many times – you cannot gain the conviction to let go of the old and put your energy into the new’. The book addresses managers and business students, ‘guiding people along the trail to the ahas and insights that foster belief change’.
Chapter 1 discusses barriers to discovery. The chapter introduces Ronnie Stuyver, an entrepreneur who invented the ‘Playpump’, a merry-go-round pump intended to help mitigate the African water crisis. When children spun the merry-go-round, the pump delivered water. While this invention worked at first, its adoption at scale and over time did not work out as expected. Some pumps broke, others only worked in large schools, and, if children did not spin the merry-go-rounds, using the pumps was inconvenient for adults in comparison to regular pumps. Golden-Biddle argues that viewing the pump as the outcome of discovery rather than a step in the process of discovery contributed to the failure of the Playpump. Considering discovery only as an outcome represents a constrained view, in which discovery is a one-time event conducted only by specialists. The chapter then introduces three different ‘discovery derailers’ – ‘ignoring unsettling cues’, ‘explaining away discrepancies’ and ‘censoring contrary ideas’ – that are common in many settings. First, ignoring unsettling cues means that information (e.g. reports about unused Playpumps) is not taken seriously, protecting individuals from challenging their beliefs. Ignoring unsettling cues is retrospectively represented in statements like, ‘We just didn’t think about that [. . .,] How could we have missed that? [. . . or,] We didn’t see it coming’. Second, explaining away discrepancies means that people find convenient explanations for situational feedback on their actions, which fits with current beliefs. Third, censoring contrary ideas means that even if people (could) bring up ideas that may challenge prevailing beliefs, others signify that those ideas are not appropriate. Such censoring may happen through bodily signals and talk but also through the design of formal mechanisms in organizations. Concluding the chapter, Golden-Biddle encourages readers to recognize those discovery derailers and treat them as wake-up calls.
Chapter 2 stresses a processual view of discovery. The book uses the example of a large-scale transformation at Microsoft, guided by CEO Satya Nadella, to show how the organization managed to cultivate processes of discovery. Golden-Biddle suggests that rigidity of belief may hamper this process, while flexibility of belief enables people to engage in continuous discovery. At Microsoft, initiating a ‘learn-it-all culture’, ‘growth mindsets’ and a ‘great readiness’ helped accomplish this. The chapter then presents an empirical study of ‘DeltaCare’, a medium-sized health system in which actors reoriented their beliefs over time (see also Golden-Biddle, 2020).
Chapters 3, 4 and 5 each zoom into one of the motors underpinning discovery. Chapter 3 examines the motor ‘capitalizing on surprise’. The book presents the example of Dough Dietz, the designer of an award-winning MRI. When Dietz observed the MRI in action, he realized that children panicked when they needed to go into this frightening machine. Instead of derailing this surprise, however, he examined how to overcome children’s fear, ultimately leading to a playful setting in which children were open to using the MRI. The book argues that Dietz’s attitude toward surprise is uncommon in organizations, as most managers strive to meet deadlines and run organizations in predictable ways, leading them to ignore surprises. Capitalizing on surprise, however, requires abductive thinking, a reasoning style that relies on whether ‘something may be’ (Locke, Golden-Biddle, & Feldman, 2008, p. 907) operative. The book suggests three mechanisms through which surprise can be capitalized: ‘savoring surprise’, ‘seeking clues to surprise’ and ‘setting surprise in motion’.
The second motor – ‘harnessing genuine doubt’ – is the focus of Chapter 4. Using the example of the owners and senior managers of a Seattle-based restaurant, doubting their beliefs about how to serve people during the Covid-19 lockdowns, the chapter suggests that doubt may be uncomfortable, but it also opens the path to discovery. Only when people grapple with the ‘torment of the unknown’ can they change beliefs and discover new things. The chapter emphasizes the balance necessary to harness genuine doubt: when people are overly confident in their knowledge, they may derail discovery; but it is equally problematic when they do not trust their knowledge at all. The sweet spot is ‘confident humility’ (Grant, 2023), where confidence and doubt are balanced.
Chapter 5 introduces ‘launching new ways’ as the third motor of discovery. Golden-Biddle argues that this motor is different from the other motors: If embracing the first motor of surprise draws people’s attention to the new reality, and if harnessing the second motor of genuine doubt challenges people to acknowledge what they don’t know about it, then launching new ways propels everyone to come to know the reoriented beliefs and practices that enable transformation.
This motor turns possibilities for action into feasible ways of operating. The chapter introduces three enablers, each of which orients actions to overcome prior beliefs, is situated in a specific context, involves reflection and requires the engagement of a broader community. These enablers are: ‘seeing beyond your expectations’ (which may be limited through selective attention), ‘permitting recombination’ of existing elements such as actors, capabilities and routines, and ‘assessing the suitability of new ways’ of acting.
Having introduced the three motors of discovery, Chapter 6 examines how organizations can build a capacity for discovery. First, it is important to ‘build diverse representations’ by engaging a broad diversity of people in the discovery process. This way, actors can recombine existing elements in new ways. Second, actors must ‘foster respectful engagement’ – instead of assuming comprehensive knowledge and superiority, interveners must listen empathetically to those affected by an intervention. Third, the chapter emphasizes the relevance of ‘designing flexibility into roles’. When experts, for instance, are flexible in their roles and open to adjustments, boundaries between actors and their roles become more fluid, enabling transformation.
Relatedly, Chapter 7 makes the point that discovery should be seen as a continuous process, as people iteratively experience surprises, and doubt, and discover new ways. This chapter comes back to the empirical study of DeltaCare, showing how actors went through multiple cycles of the discovery process, enabling a major transformation of the organization. The first cycle, for instance, started with the belief that mapping patient care flows was simple. It turned out to be more complex than expected, however, leading actors to recognize that there were various obstacles exacerbating patient care flows. This way, beliefs changed within the process of discovery from assuming that care flows were smooth to recognizing substantial obstacles.
Chapter 8 concludes the book by contrasting traditional approaches to change management with the implications of change management based on a discovery logic. First, while traditional change management begins with a pre-set problem and subsequently engages affected people, discovery-based change management begins with the recognition of an unsettling situation and engages diverse actors already in this step of the process. Second, while traditional change management aims for users’ acceptance of an intervention, the approach suggested by the book strives to access people’s experiences as a vital aspect of exploring uncertain situations. Third, traditional change management assumes a sequential structure of planning, design and implementation, but the discovery-oriented approach suggests that there is no pre-defined sequence of those steps. Hence, discovery is not only a part of the first phase of the change process but an essential feature of the entire change management process. Interestingly, Golden-Biddle does not argue that discovery is always necessary. Instead, actors ‘must differentiate change that requires new beliefs and practices – reimagining, rethinking, redesigning work – from change that requires only minor adjustments to practices, and no belief change of significance to those impacted’. Hence, the discovery-oriented change approach offers an alternative to traditional change management, which is relevant in fundamental organizational transformations. Because those ideas are intriguing, I would like to know more about the idiosyncrasies of discovery-oriented change management, how to employ it and how (and whether) it can be integrated with traditional change management. This would also enable a deeper understanding of how discovery can be cultivated (see Chapter 6).
In conclusion, I believe that the book substantially resonates with Organization Studies scholarship. Even though most of us would probably agree that discovery is essential, the process of discovery is not sufficiently well understood. The book succeeds in developing explanations of this process, which advances scholarly and practical understanding of discovery. Such an understanding is important because many phenomena that organization scientists explain, such as innovation and change, involve discovery. Hence, the book enables a better understanding of these phenomena. Moreover, research often involves a process of discovery. While the book is not primarily targeted at research practices, its insights about how to cultivate discovery are equally important for those practices and the scientists who perform them. The book offers theoretical explanations, practical examples and tools for reflection that can help researchers find impediments to discovery and promote the discovery process.
It is also remarkable how the book sensitizes the reader to the importance of practice and process theorizing. Reconsider, for instance, the example of Dough Dietz (Chapter 3), who did not discover the problems with the MRI apart from practice, but as he observed it in its use. Similarly, the book vividly shows why viewing discovery as a one-time event is problematic (for instance, in the ‘Playpump’ example in Chapter 1), and instead reorients the reader to a process ontology. In this vein, the book echoes familiar concepts in practice and process theorizing such as possibilities (Pentland, Mahringer, Dittrich, Feldman, & Ryan Wolf, 2020), situated action (Suchman, 2007), abductive reasoning (Dunne & Dougherty, 2016) and pragmatist inquiry (Martela, 2015). Karen Golden-Biddle succeeds in offering an analytical framework (i.e. the motors of discovery) that helps to bring various aspects relevant to discovery together.
Moreover, the book reminded me of popular phenomena in organization studies, such as inertia or competency traps. The key difference compared to the traditional perspective, however, is that the book traces these phenomena to the level of actual practice. This way, those phenomena become less abstract and more tangible for scholars and managers alike, instead of redirecting readers to high-level explanations or explanations that are rooted in genius minds. This way, Karen Golden-Biddle helps us gain a practical sensitivity to the process of discovery. This may enable us to tackle the challenges ahead of us, such as digital transformation or the climate crisis, by cultivating discovery in and through action.
