Artful Change Agency and Organizing for Innovation: The Case of a Nordic Fintech Cooperative

For quite a few years now, innovation has been high on the private and political agenda,both locally and internationally,due to increased global competition. Discussions of the concept often include the phenomenon of disruption, which is perceived as threatening, and which calls for us to create and embrace the new. In extension of that, the management concept of ‘design thinking’ is sometimes proposed as a wayfor managers to deal with this challenge. However, research into the intersection of the managerial aspects of innovation, design and organization remains scarce, and available literature on the topic predominantly consists of popular how-to books. Based on a case study, this project aims to contribute to research on innovation management and design management, which includes design thinking in the management discourse. It pursues this goal by exploring the concept of design thinking as a means of developing the innovative organization from a position within the Scandinavian critical reflexive processual approach to organization and management studies. The study explores organizing practices within the anonymous case organization, FintechOrg, initially taking an inductive approach as a way of laying the foundation for a possible subsequent deductive introduction of design thinking methods into a managerial setting at FintechOrg.