About Us

Interdisciplinary Group for Research on Innovation (IGRI)

Founded in 2005, IGRI is a group of researchers from different disciplines at the University of Michigan dedicated to studying organizational innovation holistically. We believe that our unique combination of research expertise in fields as diverse as architecture, management, information science, and organizational studies qualifies us to probe deeper into the question of how innovation happens, and what organizational factors are crucial to the innovation process. Where previous research has focused on either the social component of organizations or on the spatial dimensions involved in the innovation process, we propose to probe organizations’ spatial, social and information processes and thereby develop practical theories of how innovation happens, and what processes and resources are critical to innovation. Our research objectives are:
  1. To enrich our understanding of how innovation works in organizations by exploring the interaction between innovation processes, social networks, spatial layout and information technology.
  2. To enhance our understanding of the effects of spatial layout on the formation and maintenance of social network structure, and the resultant effect of networks on innovation.
  3. To understand the role of information technology in mediating difficulties in the innovation process accruing from organizational spatial and social effects.
  4. To identify opportunities to guide the social and organizational structure, spatial layout and information technology use of work organizations to create more effective, efficient, and innovative design processes.