How to avoid the dominant logic of the activity to "kill" the new experiments?

The new created solutions, which follow a new logic or concept of the activity, are usually fragile. The expansion from abstract to concrete special attention to the logic or principle followed in the experiment. If left by its own, there is tendency that the dominant principle (such as standardization in mass production) "kills" the germ-cell, the new logic or principle in the created concept.

The process of ascending from abstract to concrete may stop by the old principle of working. This problem leads to two challenges:

Theoretical challenge
This leads to the questions? How to see the process of ascending from abstract to concrete so that we could represent more clearly the old and the new logic? How to take into account the influence of the old dominant logic (e.g. mass production)?

Practical challenge
What practical solutions could help us to avoid this problem? One possible practical solution is to concentrate in fewer solutions but with a longer-time follow-up or cooperation with the researcher. In other words, work with fewer ideas for a longer time. This would allow the core key new ideas of the the new concept to become locally more robust and increase the chance of becoming more sustainable. It means taking longer periods of follow-up of the same change laboratory.

Do we need variations of CL for different developmental phases and different historical types of activity?

This question is related to the timing of the intervention. The Big cycle of expansion take several years to take place, while during a CL, there are several smaller expansive cycles.The BIG cycle refers to the expansion of an  activity system under study, while the time of thesmall cycles are much shorter, refering to the learning process taking place within the CL. How are these two cycles related?

In the first CL conducted in the company posti, for instance, it was created a new more expanded concept of the object of post service based on the idea of a sender -receiver customer. Based on this concept, several experiments were launched. The initial analysis of the expansive cycle showed that the activity was in a need state developmental phase. It means that double-bind was not yet expressed. The contradictions were not strongly manifested. The existing conflicts were still possible to be handled without radical change in the logic of production (concept of the activity).

This leads us to sub-questions:

1) Is it possible to jump over developmental phases, e.g. the double-bind phase? The posti case, suggests the need for for variations of CL according to the developmental phase in which a certain activity is. For example, if the activity is in a need-state phase, the CL would have to concentrate in questioning. The lack of a strong double-bind may also request longer term follow-up.

2) How do we take in account the dominant logic of the activity (e.g. mass production logic: standardization, specialization, top-down decisions, hierarchy type of community) to avoid stopping the process of expansion during and after the Change Laboratories? Do we need a variation of CL for different historical type of activity?

How to analyse the expansive cycle in complex organizations?

In small and specialized organizations, it is relatively easy to identify an activity and make an interpretation of its developmental phase. However, in large organizations like the POSTI (www.posti.fi), there are variations of the same activity and there are multiple activities that are interdependent, in different developmental phases or even following different concepts (or logic/principle) of production.

How to represent the cycle of expansive learning in these cases?