Building learning partnerships between innovators and researchers

In conducting research into innovation, researchers find themselves positioned in complicated roles and challenging spaces. This chapter draws on three complementary conceptual frameworks – learning partnerships, para-ethnography and the analytic third – to explain how the project’s research relationships developed and their distinctive characteristics. The authors note how the traditional understanding of the ethnographer as distanced and uninvolved may not be possible in applied organisational settings, particularly when feeding in information and insights might enable innovators to better deal with the challenges of complex system change. The chapter highlights the importance of attention being paid to the role of emotions in innovation processes and how carefully managed relationships that acknowledge emotions can enhance the potential to realise effective innovation outcomes.