Phillips, MA and Pandza, K orcid.org/0000-0002-6807-1812 (2023) Could an incumbent firm develop a radically new medical technology with an old organizational capability? Innovation. ISSN 1447-9338
Abstract
Our case study addresses how an incumbent firm from the pharmaceutical industry develops a radically new medical technology. We engage with the question as to whether such a radical innovation could be developed by relying on existent patterns of actions (existing organisational capability) or whether such novelty also requires doing innovation differently (new organisational capability). We argue that a sharp conceptual distiction between sustaining existent and developing new organizational capabilities is inadequate for describing organization of a radical innovation within an incubent firm. We propose that developing a radical innovation in a nascent innovation ecosystem requires multiple modifications across many systemic processes that constitute organisational capability for innovation. Hence, many small and interdependent innovations in organisational processes, practices and structures can make a big difference for developing radically new technology. Radical technological innovation goes hand in hand with management innovation. We argue that the nascent innovation ecosystem necessitates a careful balancing between legitimacy-seeking and advantage-seeking actions, which guides managers when adapting organisational capability for innovation. When complexity of an innovation ecosystem increases, broader changes across multiple systemic processes for innovation are required. A degree of continuity between existing and new organisational capabilities for innovation increases the internal acceptance of radical innovation.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2023 The Author(s). This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. |
Keywords: | Medical technology, radical innovation, organizational capability, case study |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Business (Leeds) > Management Division (LUBS) (Leeds) > Management Division Strategy and Organisation (LUBS) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 24 Jan 2023 15:16 |
Last Modified: | 21 Jul 2023 11:39 |
Status: | Published online |
Publisher: | Taylor & Francis |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/14479338.2023.2173204 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:195546 |
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Licence: CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0