Innovation for resilience

INNOVATION FOR RESILIENCE Joint 11th biannual REA Symposium and 14th annual Resilient Health Care Society Meeting | 20-24 October 2025 | Brazil Ivonne Herrera | NTNU Samfunnsforskning (Societal Research) | Norway, Zenodo DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17418907 Understanding resilience –as a moving target “ability of an organization or system to keep or recover allowing a stable state to continue operations during or after major mishap…” -Hollnagel, 2004 “Resilient performance describes how well a system adjusts its functioning before, during, or after changes, disturbances and opportunities, sustaining operations under expected and unexpected conditions “ -Hollnagel, 2018 1) rebound; 2) robustness; 3) graceful extensibility; 4) sustain adaptability -Woods, 2015 “Resilience is a verb that refers to capabilities that build and sustain the potential for continuous adaptability“ -Woods, 2018 Evolution from Resilience Engineering Literature Picture source: Shutterstock Climate, technological, geopolitics and demographics changes are reshaping our world. Organisations must not only withstand disruptions but also adapt and thrive. Resilient performance includes the potential to seize opportunities, not just adjust prior, during and after changes and disturbances. However, this aspect of resilience remains underexplored. Do organisational conditions that foster innovation also enable resilient performance and the ability to seize opportunities? “Innovation as a process of turning opportunities into new ideas and of putting these into widely used in practices” -Tidd and Bessant 2013 Process innovation – work smarter Incremental innovation – small steps, continuous improvements Employee driven innovation – exploiting employees’ ideas, knowledge and experience Innovation Resilience Common organisational capabilities? Improvisation Adaptability Collaboration Pentagon Model – for analysing organisations - Schiefloe, 2021 Pentagon Model – for analysing organisations “challenges in complex organisations seldom can be traces to one single factor” Holistic analysis of organisations - Schiefloe, 2021 Pentagon Model – for analysing organisations “challenges in complex organisations seldom can be traces to one single factor” Holistic analysis of organisations - Schiefloe, 2021 Complementary capabilities for organisational opportunity seizing Both favour flexible structure Use technology to extend system capability Learning oriented culture Network collaboration for adaptive coordination and rapid mobilisation Extend operational reach with scalability and flexible resources that can be reallocated Thank you for your attention REFERENCES Schiefloe, P.M. (2021). Organisasjon analyse. Fagbokforlaget. ISBN: 978-82-450-3482-0. Tidd, J., Bessant, J. (2013). Managing Innovation: integrating technological, market and organizational change. Fifth Edition. Chichester: Wiley, UK. Nemeth, C. P., & Herrera, I. A. (2015). Building change: Resilience Engineering after ten years. Safety Science, 71, 1–6. Hollnagel, E., Nemeth. P. 2022. ‘From RE to Resilient Performance’. Advancing resilient performance, 1-9. Woods, D.D. (2015) “Four concepts for resilience and the implications for the future of resilience engineering,” RESS.