Facilitating Innovation Through Cognitive Mapping of Uncertainty

The Skunkworks framework was developed and tested to solve problems managers face from the high level of uncertainty in the early stages of defining an innovative project. It combines cognitive mapping with other team processes in a sequence discovered by action research, forming a new management tool to identify and reduce unknowns. Described in this paper is the Skunkworks framework and the participants' response to it, contributing new insights into the managerial use of cognitive mapping tools as strategy in practice (Jarzabkowski 2005).

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