Luca Simeone
I work as a researcher, educator, entrepreneur and professional consultant across interaction and service design, design management and innovation management - with a particular interest in critical and strategic thinking. I currently serve as an Associate Professor at Aalborg University, where my core focus is on how design and arts can support personal, organizational and community resilience, innovation, transition thinking, long-term strategic orientation and positive and impactful change. I have carried out research, teaching and consulting activities at various universities (Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Polytechnic University of Milan, Malmö University and University of the Arts London), (co)authoring and (co)editing some 70 publications. I have founded and managed successful companies and award-winning design-driven firms operating in more than 30 countries and with commercial hubs in Milan, Singapore, Toronto and Doha (key Clients include Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Dior, Sony). I also help private and public organizations (e.g. the European Commission, World Bank, Research Council of Canada, UNICEF and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research) to define strategies, policies, and funding schemes to foster innovation. As a certified yoga instructor (RYT-200), I offer experiential sessions that anchor breath-based movement to immersive art installations and to science-based insights on mindfulness.
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Selected publications by Luca Simeone
Methods. The paper combines the insights from theory with the empirical evidence gathered by adopting an extreme case study approach: the detailed analysis of a case study related to an R&D project funded by the European Commission and aimed to investigate and produce innovative serious games in the area of healthcare. The project gathered a large number of stakeholders and deliberately adopted design processes in order to support an open innovation approach.
Findings. The paper provides insights into the use of design outputs such as artefacts, sketches, visual representations or prototypes in order to translate ideas, theoretical and technical requirements, documents and outputs into formats that can be more easily understood and appreciated by various stakeholders. This supports and favours coordination in open innovation projects where many different stakeholders are engaged.
Research limitations. Although the adoption of an extreme case study approach offers important implications to understand the role of design in R&D-oriented open innovation, the use of single case study represents the basis both to explore hypothesis and to provide first evidence, that need to be further tested with other qualitative and quantitative analysis.
Practical implications. The paper offers practical implications about how design can help individuals and organizations involved in R&D activities to better communicate and share knowledge among various stakeholders by aligning their different needs, interests and languages along the various phases of their project development.
Originality/value. The originality of the paper lays at the intersection of three different fields: open innovation, knowledge management and design for innovation, thus integrating mature, but so far isolated research streams. It provides insights for theory building by explaining the use of design as knowledge translational mechanism and informs the practice by highlighting the power of design as a means to support knowledge flows into open innovation-based R&D projects.
The notion of strategic ambiguity was introduced in organizational studies by March and Olsen and later elaborated by Eisenberg. Strategic ambiguity is a “strategy for suspending rational imperatives toward consistency [that helps organization] explore alternative ideas of possible purposes and alternative concepts of behavioral consistency” (March and Olsen 1976, 77).
Eisenberg describes strategic ambiguity as a managerial approach where people in organizations deliberately use communication strategies that are not consistent over time or omit important contextual cues thus leaving space for multiple interpretations by others; people within organizations are thus freer to interpret and act according to their own viewpoint (Eisenberg 2007). Ambiguity does not replace accurate information and efficient processes, but can be used as an effective dialogic, plurivocal strategy to appreciate differences among organization members.
Aim
This paper explores the role of strategic ambiguity as a management practice, as used in Senseable City Lab - a design-oriented lab located at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA.
Senseable City Lab's projects span from architectural interventions, such as The Cloud, a responsive building in London, to innovative product design, such as The Copenhagen Wheel, a system that transforms ordinary bicycles into hybrid sensors/actuators that provide feedback on pollution, traffic congestion and road conditions in real-time, or to future sensing technologies, such as TrashTrack, an initiative that used hundreds of small location aware tags to track different types of trash to reveal the final destination of our everyday objects (and the waste management practices behind the removal process).
Senseable City Lab is organized through a hybrid structure: most of the activities are carried out by small teams with a large degree of autonomy, whilst some management positions (the lab’s directors and senior members) still keep a close oversight of the organization.
These small teams are the key elements of a more horizontal and flexible organizational order. Each team is in charge of one or more projects. Some of the projects have a pre-set outcome and a clearly specified deadline. Others start as ideas that get shaped along the way and therefore are initially oriented towards less defined outcomes. The number of members per team varies from few people to a few dozens. In the past five years, more than 300 people have worked with one of these teams on Senseable City Lab's projects.
Teams are usually the key units for managing these projects. Mutual adjustment and redefinition of tasks are common within and across teams. The definition of rules, responsibilities, instructions and job methods is therefore variable and depending on the situation, the resources available and the operational context. People can quite freely move across teams and teams get reshuffled quite frequently according to the needs of the projects and the resources available.
Within this structure, the role of the lab's directors is delicate as they still want to drive the organization, but at the same time want to leave space for the self-organizing dynamics behind the teams. The organization is paradoxically controlled at the same time by a top-down vertical reporting system and by emergent, horizontal mechanisms.
Within this context strategic ambiguity is an important component of the management practice of the lab as it helps the coexistence of vertical, top-down organizational processes and team-based horizontal dynamics. This ambivalence is at the same time a resource, as it creates looser organizational structures where stakeholders can more freely position themselves, and a threat, as it renders organizational communication more unclear, inconsistent and indefinite.
The paper draws upon an ethnographic research conducted by the author at Senseable City Lab in 2011 and presents some critical reflections on the potential and the shortcomings of strategic ambiguity as management practice within the lab.
The reception of strategic ambiguity in literature
The positive role of strategic ambiguity and ambivalence in organization has been explored in several studies (Bernheim and Whinston 1998; Heller 1988; Pratt 2012).
Some other scholars have problematized the concept of strategic ambiguity. In one of these critical accounts, Markham recounts the difficulties experienced by the members of a small design company in a work environment where the management firmly believes in freeing designers from rules, standards, directives, an environment “riddled with ambiguous communication” (Markham 1996, 389). Markham is not entirely convinced that strategic ambiguity can allow the members of an organization to freely express their viewpoints because they might not be able to overcome the context of hierarchy and authority of the organization and feel free to have the critical stance to re-interpret ambiguous messages and instantiate their own positioning. Her conclusion is that the potential of strategic ambiguity has to be re-evaluated in a more critical light.
Discussion
Informed by findings from the ethnographic study conducted by the author, this paper explores the potential of strategic ambiguity as applied in the daily management practice of Senseable City Lab. Strategic ambiguity has an important role in harmonizing the tensions resulting from the ambivalence of a hybrid vertical-horizontal organizational structure. This comes with a price, as this ambiguity renders the organizational communications more complex and uncertain, thus arising the anxiety level for some members of the lab.
Key references
Bernheim, B. Douglas, and Michael D. Whinston. 1998. “Incomplete Contracts and Strategic Ambiguity.” American Economic Review: 902–932.
Eisenberg, Eric M. 2007. Strategic Ambiguities: Essays on Communication, Organization, and Identity. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
Heller, Monica. 1988. “Strategic Ambiguity: Code-switching in the Management of Conflict.” In Codeswitching: Anthropological and Sociolinguistic Perspectives, edited by Monica Heller. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
March, James G., and Johan P. Olsen. 1976. Ambiguity and Choice in Organizations. 2nd ed. Bergen: Universitetforlaget.
Markham, Annette. 1996. “Design Discourse: A Critical Analysis of Strategic Ambiguity and Workplace Control.” Management Communication Quarterly 9 (4): 389–421.
Pratt, Michael G. 2012. “Just a Good Place to Visit? Exploring Positive Responses to Psychological Ambivalence.” In The Oxford Handbook of Positive Organizational Scholarship, edited by Kim S. Cameron and Gretchen M. Spreitzer. New York, USA: Oxford University Press.
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Other papers and books by Luca Simeone
The REFF experiment is more than its content, designing a new possibility for publishing: the book comes fully integrated with a digital dimension through the use of Augmented Reality in the form of QRCodes and Fiducial Markers. These devices transform the experience of reading, enhancing it with an interactive dimension through the REFF network and global social networks, in a way that is completely uncensored. The software is deposited on paper as hypertext, making it clickable, expandable, commentable and reactive, opening a virtually unlimited space for comparison between authors and readers on issues and debates on the book, dissolving the traditional boundaries that separate them. This book develops a new prototype of infinite potential for the intersection between digital and paper dimensions and, thanks to a special application, is available on the web or via smartphone: it is ubiquitous and crossmedia publishing, a new way to "write on the world”.
After years of being inadequately defined, the professional profile of service designers is now taking shape. Today private and public institutions recognize service designers as essential contributors to their innovation and development processes. What are the capabilities that characterize a service designer? These essential capabilities are what service designers should acquire in their education and can sell when looking for a job.
Methods. The paper combines the insights from theory with the empirical evidence gathered by adopting an extreme case study approach: the detailed analysis of a case study related to an R&D project funded by the European Commission and aimed to investigate and produce innovative serious games in the area of healthcare. The project gathered a large number of stakeholders and deliberately adopted design processes in order to support an open innovation approach.
Findings. The paper provides insights into the use of design outputs such as artefacts, sketches, visual representations or prototypes in order to translate ideas, theoretical and technical requirements, documents and outputs into formats that can be more easily understood and appreciated by various stakeholders. This supports and favours coordination in open innovation projects where many different stakeholders are engaged.
Research limitations. Although the adoption of an extreme case study approach offers important implications to understand the role of design in R&D-oriented open innovation, the use of single case study represents the basis both to explore hypothesis and to provide first evidence, that need to be further tested with other qualitative and quantitative analysis.
Practical implications. The paper offers practical implications about how design can help individuals and organizations involved in R&D activities to better communicate and share knowledge among various stakeholders by aligning their different needs, interests and languages along the various phases of their project development.
Originality/value. The originality of the paper lays at the intersection of three different fields: open innovation, knowledge management and design for innovation, thus integrating mature, but so far isolated research streams. It provides insights for theory building by explaining the use of design as knowledge translational mechanism and informs the practice by highlighting the power of design as a means to support knowledge flows into open innovation-based R&D projects.
The notion of strategic ambiguity was introduced in organizational studies by March and Olsen and later elaborated by Eisenberg. Strategic ambiguity is a “strategy for suspending rational imperatives toward consistency [that helps organization] explore alternative ideas of possible purposes and alternative concepts of behavioral consistency” (March and Olsen 1976, 77).
Eisenberg describes strategic ambiguity as a managerial approach where people in organizations deliberately use communication strategies that are not consistent over time or omit important contextual cues thus leaving space for multiple interpretations by others; people within organizations are thus freer to interpret and act according to their own viewpoint (Eisenberg 2007). Ambiguity does not replace accurate information and efficient processes, but can be used as an effective dialogic, plurivocal strategy to appreciate differences among organization members.
Aim
This paper explores the role of strategic ambiguity as a management practice, as used in Senseable City Lab - a design-oriented lab located at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA.
Senseable City Lab's projects span from architectural interventions, such as The Cloud, a responsive building in London, to innovative product design, such as The Copenhagen Wheel, a system that transforms ordinary bicycles into hybrid sensors/actuators that provide feedback on pollution, traffic congestion and road conditions in real-time, or to future sensing technologies, such as TrashTrack, an initiative that used hundreds of small location aware tags to track different types of trash to reveal the final destination of our everyday objects (and the waste management practices behind the removal process).
Senseable City Lab is organized through a hybrid structure: most of the activities are carried out by small teams with a large degree of autonomy, whilst some management positions (the lab’s directors and senior members) still keep a close oversight of the organization.
These small teams are the key elements of a more horizontal and flexible organizational order. Each team is in charge of one or more projects. Some of the projects have a pre-set outcome and a clearly specified deadline. Others start as ideas that get shaped along the way and therefore are initially oriented towards less defined outcomes. The number of members per team varies from few people to a few dozens. In the past five years, more than 300 people have worked with one of these teams on Senseable City Lab's projects.
Teams are usually the key units for managing these projects. Mutual adjustment and redefinition of tasks are common within and across teams. The definition of rules, responsibilities, instructions and job methods is therefore variable and depending on the situation, the resources available and the operational context. People can quite freely move across teams and teams get reshuffled quite frequently according to the needs of the projects and the resources available.
Within this structure, the role of the lab's directors is delicate as they still want to drive the organization, but at the same time want to leave space for the self-organizing dynamics behind the teams. The organization is paradoxically controlled at the same time by a top-down vertical reporting system and by emergent, horizontal mechanisms.
Within this context strategic ambiguity is an important component of the management practice of the lab as it helps the coexistence of vertical, top-down organizational processes and team-based horizontal dynamics. This ambivalence is at the same time a resource, as it creates looser organizational structures where stakeholders can more freely position themselves, and a threat, as it renders organizational communication more unclear, inconsistent and indefinite.
The paper draws upon an ethnographic research conducted by the author at Senseable City Lab in 2011 and presents some critical reflections on the potential and the shortcomings of strategic ambiguity as management practice within the lab.
The reception of strategic ambiguity in literature
The positive role of strategic ambiguity and ambivalence in organization has been explored in several studies (Bernheim and Whinston 1998; Heller 1988; Pratt 2012).
Some other scholars have problematized the concept of strategic ambiguity. In one of these critical accounts, Markham recounts the difficulties experienced by the members of a small design company in a work environment where the management firmly believes in freeing designers from rules, standards, directives, an environment “riddled with ambiguous communication” (Markham 1996, 389). Markham is not entirely convinced that strategic ambiguity can allow the members of an organization to freely express their viewpoints because they might not be able to overcome the context of hierarchy and authority of the organization and feel free to have the critical stance to re-interpret ambiguous messages and instantiate their own positioning. Her conclusion is that the potential of strategic ambiguity has to be re-evaluated in a more critical light.
Discussion
Informed by findings from the ethnographic study conducted by the author, this paper explores the potential of strategic ambiguity as applied in the daily management practice of Senseable City Lab. Strategic ambiguity has an important role in harmonizing the tensions resulting from the ambivalence of a hybrid vertical-horizontal organizational structure. This comes with a price, as this ambiguity renders the organizational communications more complex and uncertain, thus arising the anxiety level for some members of the lab.
Key references
Bernheim, B. Douglas, and Michael D. Whinston. 1998. “Incomplete Contracts and Strategic Ambiguity.” American Economic Review: 902–932.
Eisenberg, Eric M. 2007. Strategic Ambiguities: Essays on Communication, Organization, and Identity. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
Heller, Monica. 1988. “Strategic Ambiguity: Code-switching in the Management of Conflict.” In Codeswitching: Anthropological and Sociolinguistic Perspectives, edited by Monica Heller. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
March, James G., and Johan P. Olsen. 1976. Ambiguity and Choice in Organizations. 2nd ed. Bergen: Universitetforlaget.
Markham, Annette. 1996. “Design Discourse: A Critical Analysis of Strategic Ambiguity and Workplace Control.” Management Communication Quarterly 9 (4): 389–421.
Pratt, Michael G. 2012. “Just a Good Place to Visit? Exploring Positive Responses to Psychological Ambivalence.” In The Oxford Handbook of Positive Organizational Scholarship, edited by Kim S. Cameron and Gretchen M. Spreitzer. New York, USA: Oxford University Press.
""
The REFF experiment is more than its content, designing a new possibility for publishing: the book comes fully integrated with a digital dimension through the use of Augmented Reality in the form of QRCodes and Fiducial Markers. These devices transform the experience of reading, enhancing it with an interactive dimension through the REFF network and global social networks, in a way that is completely uncensored. The software is deposited on paper as hypertext, making it clickable, expandable, commentable and reactive, opening a virtually unlimited space for comparison between authors and readers on issues and debates on the book, dissolving the traditional boundaries that separate them. This book develops a new prototype of infinite potential for the intersection between digital and paper dimensions and, thanks to a special application, is available on the web or via smartphone: it is ubiquitous and crossmedia publishing, a new way to "write on the world”.
After years of being inadequately defined, the professional profile of service designers is now taking shape. Today private and public institutions recognize service designers as essential contributors to their innovation and development processes. What are the capabilities that characterize a service designer? These essential capabilities are what service designers should acquire in their education and can sell when looking for a job.
In loving memory of Salvatore Iaconesi, who taught us the meaning and power of facing the world with a sense of “meraviglia”.