Technological innovation : oversights and foresights PDF
Preview Technological innovation : oversights and foresights
Challenges for building a theory of technological innovation stem from the inevitability of oversights and foresights. Oversights and foresights are inevitable because innovation outcomes are uncertain and contingent upon a match between a firm's internal capabilities and its external environments, even as innovation activities are complex and constrained. How can the slim odds of success be en- hanced? This book contains several chapters that address this ques- tion. Specifically, the chapters suggest how innovation outcomes can be systematic and enacted by technology entrepreneurs who are able to break away from constraints of the past in order to ac- tively manage innovation activities in the present. Technological innovation Technological innovation Oversights and foresights Edited by Raghu Garud Praveen Rattan Nayyar Zur Baruch Shapira New York University CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo, Delhi Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521552998 © Cambridge University Press 1997 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1997 This digitally printed version 2008 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Technological innovation : oversights and foresights / edited by Raghu Garud, Praveen Rattan Nayyar, Zur Baruch Shapira. p. cm. ISBN 0-521-55299-0 (hbk.) 1. Technological innovations. 2. Decision-making. I. Garud Raghu. II. Nayyar, Praveen Rattan. III. Shapira, Zur Baruch. HD45.S394 1997 338'.064—dc20 96-29121 CIP ISBN 978-0-521-55299-8 hardback ISBN 978-0-521-08472-7 paperback Contents Contributors page vii Foreword ix Preface xiii Section I Introduction 1 Technological innovation: Oversights and foresights 3 Raghu Garud, Praveen Nayyar, and Zur Shapira Section II Learning to flip coins 2 On flipping coins and making technology choices: Luck as an explanation of technological foresight and oversight 13 Jay B. Barney 3 Technological choices and the inevitability of errors 20 Raghu Garud, Praveen Nayyar, and Zur Shapira 4 Rational entrepreneurs or optimistic martyrs? Some considerations on technological regimes, corporate entries, and the evolutionary role of decision biases 41 Giovanni Dosi and Dan Lovallo Section III Tailoring fits 5 Cognition and capabilities: Opportunities seized and missed in the history of the computer industry 71 Richard N. Langlois 6 Changing the game of corporate research: Learning to thrive in the fog of reality 95 John Seely Brown 7 Environmental determinants of work motivation, creativity, and innovation: The case of R&D downsizing 111 Teresa M. Amabile and Regina Conti Contents Section IV Remembering to forget 8 Local rationality, global blunders, and the boundaries of technological choice: Lessons from IBM and DOS 129 Joseph F. Porac 9 On the dynamics of forecasting in technologically complex environments: The unexpectedly long old age of optical lithography 147 Rebecca Henderson 10 Three faces of organizational learning: Wisdom, inertia, and discovery 167 Daniel Levinthal 11 Organizational entrepreneurship in mature-industry firms: Foresight, oversight, and invisibility 181 Mariann Jelinek 12 Minimizing technological oversights: A marketing research perspective 214 Jehoshua Eliashberg, Gary L. Lilien, and Vithala R. Rao Section V (S)Top management and culture 13 Firm capabilities and managerial decision making: A theory of innovation biases 233 Janet E. L. Bercovitz, John M. de Figueiredo, and David J. Teece 14 Organization responsiveness to environmental shock as an indicator of organizational foresight and oversight: The role of executive team characteristics and organizational context 260 Johann Peter Murmann and Michael L. Tushman 15 Technological innovation, learning, and leadership 279 Andrew H. Van de Ven and David N. Grazman 16 Risky lessons: Conditions for organizational learning 306 Baruch Fischhoff, Zvi Lanir, and Stephen Johnson 17 Exploiting enthusiasm: A case study of applied theories of innovation 325 Gideon Kunda Section VI Clearing the fog 18 Beating the odds: Towards a theory of technological innovation 345 Raghu Garud, Praveen Nayyar, and Zur Shapira Author Index 355 Subject Index 361 Contributors Teresa Amabile Harvard University, Boston, MA Jay Barney Ohio State University, Columbus, OH Janet E. L. Bercovitz University of California, Berkeley, CA John Seely Brown Xerox Corporation, PARC, Palo Alto, CA Regina Conti Brandeis University, Waltham, MA Giovanni Dosi University of Rome, "La Sapienza," Rome, Italy Jehoshua Eliashberg University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA John M. de Figueiredo University of California, Berkeley, CA Baruch Fischhoff Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA Raghu Garud New York University, New York, NY David N. Grazman University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA Rebecca Henderson Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA Mariann Jelinek College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA Stephen Johnson Decision Research, Eugene OR Gideon Kunda Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, Israel Richard Langlois University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT Zvi Lanir Institute for Strategic Thought and Practice, Tel Aviv, Israel Dan Levinthal University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA Gary Lilien Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA Daniel Lovallo University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA viii Contributors James G. March Stanford University, Stanford, CA Johann Peter Murmann Columbia University, New York, NY Praveen Nayyar New York University, New York, NY Joseph Porac University of Illinois, Champaign, IL Vithala Rao Cornell University, Ithaca, NY Zur Shapira New York University, New York, NY David Teece University of California, Berkeley, CA Michael L. Tushman Columbia University, New York, NY Andrew H. Van de Ven University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN
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