| Managing Innovation-Driven Change in the Product Development Process: "If Only We'd Known Sooner" |
| | Heller, Trudy | New Jersey Institute of Technology | heller97@aol.com | (610) 543 0499 |
| | Managers of canceled innovation projects may berate themselves retrospectively for not having known about downstream organizational changes earlier in the development process. The assumption that knowledge of changes can and should be captured in early stages of product development is prevalent in product development research.
This paper reports on a field study of 51 innovation-driven change initiatives in 13 product development projects in two Fortune 500 corporations. Findings challenge the idea that all types of innovation-driven change are equally predictable and accessible early in the product development process. The paper presents a framework for understanding the distinction between relatively predictable informational knowledge and less predictable interpretive knowledge of change, and implications for managing the latter. |
| | Keywords: innovation; product development; organizational change |
| Process Management and Organizational Adaptation To Technological Change |
| | Benner, Mary J. | Columbia U. | mjb68@columbia.edu | (610) - 617-7835 |
| | This paper examines the role of process management techniques in organizational adaptation to changing technology. I propose that process management's focus on identifying, improving, and adhering to organizational processes is likely to channel innovation into incremental forms that increase efficiency and performance in periods of incremental technological change. However, these incremental forms of innovation may also reduce more exploratory innovative activity and increase inertia, impeding an organization's ability to respond appropriately to more radical technological change. I test these hypotheses with preliminary data from an experimental study. I find evidence that process management has the potential to slow organizational response to technological change, but find no evidence for efficiency benefits in stable environments. This paper provides a first step into the relatively unexplored topic of the effect of process management on organizational or technological adaptation, while also shedding light on the conflicting results of research on process management and performance. |
| | Keywords: Adaptation; Innovation; Process Management |
| Adapting to a New Environment: How a Legacy Software Organization Copes with Volatility and Change |
| | Staudenmayer, Nancy | Duke U. | nstauden@mail.duke.edu | (919) 660 - 7994 |
| | Graves, Todd | Lucent Technologies/Bell Laboratories | graves@lucent.com | (630) 713-4612 |
| | Mockus, Audris H. | Lucent Technologies | audris@lucent.com | (630)713-4612 |
| | Many of the key players in the telecommunications industry produce legacy products, software systems that were designed ten or even
twenty years ago but also serve as the underlying basis for new products. A key challenge facing these firms is how to remain innovative
and adaptive despite their ties with the past. This paper describes how one successful U.S. company coped with such a problem.
Based on interview data, we identify three key transitions this organization underwent during the product's twenty year lifetime and test their
effects using data from internal company databases. We found that environmental pressures to radically restructure the software system
were inhibited due to certain inertial legacy factors. Instead, the organization coped by making more incremental adjustments to the product,
organizational structure, coordination and control systems, and processes. A key proposition emerging from the study is that displacing
change in this way increases the degree of technical and organizational interdependencies the firm is required to manage.
|
| | Keywords: Software; Interdependency; Adaptation |
| Stop Me Before I Till Again: Managerial Capacity as a Constraint on Investment in Real Options |
| | Barnett, Michael L. | New York U. | mbarnett@stern.nyu.edu | (212)-928-3627 |
| | Extant strategy literature is increasingly focused on the need to create dynamic capabilities to
respond to "hypercompetitive" environments. Real options theory offers hope for managers facing
such an environment by highlighting methods to hold options on a variety of positions, thereby
hedging against uncertainty without bearing all the cost. However, real options are costlier than
extant theory suggests, most notably in terms of management attention. Active management,
a central basis upon which real options are valued, is limited and thus must be rationed amongst
day-to-day operations and future growth opportunities. These future growth opportunities may be
represented as a portfolio of real options. The more turbulent the environment, the more management
capacity required to deal with day-to-day operations, and the less excess management capacity left
over to tend to real options. Yet it is in turbulent environments where real options take on their greatest
value. As a result, management capacity serves as a brake on the growth of real options in turbulent
environments. |
| | Keywords: Managerial Capacity; Real Options; Uncertainty |