Giving critical form to organizational vision as tool for introspection

Participatory processes of innovation occur in moments of conflict and reconciliation across stakeholders’ voices. As such, participating in these processes presumes that stakeholders have an awareness of the products and identity of the ‘stakes’ they represent – and that they are able to articulate these. In this paper I present how critical artefacts can be directed at stakeholders from industry, as a tool to support and provoke articulated reflections on organizational identity and products. Based on experiences from a project that brought together five industrial organizations that all delivered indoor climate related products or services, I propose that critical artefacts benefit articulated introspections on organizational products and identity when these artefacts are technically feasible yet not in accordance to core company principles or norms.