Technological Innovation
Oversights and Foresights

This book explores how technological management can adapt and succeed in a world of inevitable oversights and foresights.

Raghu Garud (Edited by), Praveen Rattan Nayyar (Edited by), Zur Baruch Shapira (Edited by), James G. March (Foreword by)

9780521552998, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 28 April 1997

390 pages, 26 b/w illus. 16 tables
23.5 x 16.1 x 2.5 cm, 0.67 kg

The capacity for technology businesses to grow and change with the times is linked to how they develop and market technological innovations. Despite the importance of technological changes for corporate vitality, there are documented instances of corporations failing to capitalize on technological opportunities. Innovation outcome is 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 enhanced? Technological Innovation analyses why companies choose certain new technologies, from a technological, economic and institutional perspective. Based upon multidisciplinary research on technological choice, the book bridges research and practice.

Part I. Introduction: 1. Technological learning, oversights and foresights: an overview Raghu Garud, Praveen Nayyar and Zur Shapira
Part II. Learning to Flip Coins: 2. On flipping coins and making technology choices: luck as an explanation of technological foresight and oversight Jay Barney
3. Technological choices and the inevitability of errors Raghu Garud, Praveen Nayyar and Zur Shapira
4. Rational entrepreneurs or optimistic martyrs? Some considerations on technological regimes, industrial dynamics, and the evolutionary role of decision biases Giovanni Dosi and Dan Lovallo
Part III. Tailoring Fits: 5. Cognition and capabilities: opportunities seized and missed in the history of the computer industry Richard Langlois
6. Changing the game of corporate research: learning to think in the fog of reality John Seeley Brown
7. Environmental determinants of work motivation, creativity and innovation: the case of R&D downsizing Teresa Amabile and Regina Conti
Part IV. Remembering to Forget: 8. Local rationality, global blunders, and the boundaries of technological choice: lessons from IBM and DOS Joseph Porac
9. Of life cycles real and imaginary Rebecca Henderson
10. Three faces of organizational learning: wisdom, inertia, and discovery Dan Levinthal
11. Organizational entrepreneurship in mature industry firms: foresight, oversight and invisibility Mariann Jelinek
12. Minimizing technological oversights: a marketing research perspective Jehoshua Eliashberg, Gary L. Lilien and Vithala R. Rao
Part V. (S)top Management and Culture: 13. Firm capabilites and managerial decision-making: a theory of innovation biases, Janet Bercovitz, John Figueiredo and David Teece
14. Organizational responsiveness to environmental shock as an indicator of organizational foresight and oversight: the role of executive team characteristics and organizational context Peter Murmann and Michael Tushman
15. Technological innovation, learning and leadership Andrew H. Van de Ven and David Grazman
16. Risky lessons: conditions for organizational learning Baruch Fischhoff, Zvi Lanir and Stephen Johnson
17. Exploiting enthusiasm: a case study of applied theories of innovation Gideon Kunda
Part VI. Clearing the Fog: 18. Beating the odds: towards a theory of technological innovation Raghu Garud, Praveen Nayyar, and Zur Shapira.

Subject Areas: Business & management [KJ]