City Research Online

Abstract

This thesis aims to clarify the role of AI technology as an innovation agent and explore what the future holds for humans with AI. Although innovation management literature has extensively researched AI and its impact on innovation processes and outcomes, relatively little is known about the precise role of AI as an organisational actor, in particular, as an innovation agent. Using conceptual development and qualitative methods in the format of three standalone papers, this thesis explores three research questions to study knowledge creation with AI, innovation agency, and the future of the human with AI. The thesis’ main contribution is to the literature on innovation management as it challenges the implicit assumption that innovation comes from humans.

Each paper engages human-AI interactions from different, yet similar, perspectives to better understand innovation that is now being co-created by humans and AI. By taking the relational view, the first study conceptualises knowledge creation between humans and ChatGPT, and approaches knowledge creation as the product of relations between humans and technology. This provides a missing link in understanding AI agency and in explaining how AI can become a team member. The second study reconstructs the concept of innovation agency such that innovation agency is jointly constituted by both human and AI. From the relational perspective, this study empirically observes a sequence of actions that characterise the emergence of joint innovation agency. Finally, the third study explores the future of humans with AI using the concept of social imaginaries. This study challenges the static view of human capabilities and explores what humans are imagining themselves in the future when associated with AI. The study addresses the importance of understanding people’s imaginations for studying the future, which can become speculative sources of organisational knowledge. The three papers generate insights on topics relevant to innovation management and direct towards interdisciplinary areas for future research on AI.

Publication Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor > HD28 Management. Industrial Management Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science
Departments:	Bayes Business School > Bayes Business School Doctoral Theses Bayes Business School > Management Doctoral Theses

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