Abstract

The challenges and opportunities presented by digital technologies are placing growing pressures on present-day businesses to be increasingly innovative. With these pressures, tensions become visible between organisations as engines of efficiency and organisations as entrepreneurial innovators. In this analysis, we look at how routine and stability as core requirements for business practice and competitive advantage in engines of efficiency may limit organisations’ ability to innovate. It becomes apparent that these tensions are at the heart of how the corporation defines itself in terms of its worldview, culture, knowledge creation processes and practices: its epistemic stance. A conceptual analysis of the literature focuses on epistemic stance and innovation and the concept of the efficiency engine. The resulting framework is used to interpret the behaviour and practices of Tesla Inc; a company which epitomises entrepreneurial innovation to redefine and reconceptualise transformation of the automotive and energy markets. The differences in epistemic stance provide insights into the struggle of corporate innovation configurations in achieving high-impact innovation.

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