J. Eng. Technol. Manage. 17 (2000) 321–355 Systems of organizational sensemaking for sustained product innovation Deborah Dougherty a,* , Leslie Borrelli b , Kamal Munir b , Alan O’Sullivan c a Organization Management Department, Faculty of Management, Rutgers Uniersity, 111 Washington Street, Newark, NJ 07102, USA b McGill University, Faculty of Management, 1001 Sherbrooke St. W., Montreal, Que., Canada H3A 1G5 c Faculty of Administration, University of Ottawa, 136, rue Jean-Jacques Lussier, C.P. 450, Succ. A, Ottawa (ON), Canada K1N 6N5 Abstract We map out the systems of sensemaking people use to link market and technology knowledge into new products, in innovative versus non-innovative organizations. Systems of sensemaking are organized “webs of meaning” that govern the knowledge people make sense of, and the sense they make. Innovative sensemaking systems link more knowledge because they: (1) frame linking as hands-on practices of value creation; and (2) loosely couple three tensions between tacit and articulated knowledge across organizational levels to draw in, exploit, and recreate knowledge for innovation. We contrast sensemaking systems in innovative versus non-innovative organizations, and draw implications for theory and practice. © 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Sensemaking; Product innovation; New product development; Knowledge management 1. Background and a theoretical perspective This study maps out the systems of sensemaking through which people in established organizations link market and technology knowledge into new products. New products are the manifestation of an organization’s knowledge (Leonard, 1996), and an organization’s ability to engage in “market-technology linking,” as Burgelman (1983) calls it, is central to the effective use of that knowledge. Research demonstrates that the more thoroughly people merge deep knowledge of technological possibilities with detailed knowledge of application contexts, by linking knowledge of customer needs, market opportunities, tech- nologies, and operational constraints, the more successfully they develop new products * Corresponding author. Tel.: +1-973-353-1152. E-mail address: doughert@business.rutgers.edu (D. Dougherty). 0923-4748/00/$ – see front matter © 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PII:S0923-4748(00)00028-X