Organizational Technology

Abstract

Technical change is one of the core drivers of organizational fates (Tushman and Nelson, 1990; Nelson, 1995). Organizations can create and shape innovation streams. Through building ambidextrous organizational forms and creating options from which the senior team initiates proactive strategic change, organizations can manage the rhythm by which each expiring strength gives birth to its successor. Prior organizational competencies provide a platform so that the next phase of an organization's evolution does not start from the beginning. Organizations can renew themselves through a series of proactive strategic reorientations anchored by a common vision. Dynamic capabilities are rooted in driving streams of innovation. Firms that survive technological transitions compete through patterns of innovation over time: incremental, competence-enhancing innovation; architectural innovation; taking existing technologies to new customer segments, and fundamentally new, often competence-destroying, innovation. These dynamic capabilities are rooted in a firm's ability to be ambidextrous-to both learn and incrementally build on its past even as it simultaneously creates technological options from which senior teams make strategic bets (Duncan, 1976; Tushman and O'Reilly, 1997).