The extent of organizational innovation with IT, an important construct in the IT innovation literature, has been measured in many different ways. Some measures are more narrowly focused while others aggregate innovative behaviors across a set of innovations or across stages in the assimilation lifecycle within organizations. There appear to be some significant tradeoffs involving aggregation. More aggregated measures can be more robust and generalizable and can promote stronger predictive validity, while less aggregated measures allow more context-specific investigations and can preserve clearer theoretical interpretations. This article begins with a conceptual analysis that identifies the circumstances when these tradeoffs are most likely to favor aggregated measures. It is found that aggregation should be favorable when: (1) the researcher's interest is in general innovation or a model that generalizes to a class of innovations, (2) antecedents have effects in the same direction in all assimilation stages, (3) characteristics of organizations can be treated as constant across the innovations in the study, (4) characteristics of innovations can not be treated as constant across organizations in the study, (5) the set of innovations being aggregated includes substitutes or moderate complements, and (6) sources of noise in the measurement of innovation may be present. The article then presents an empirical study using data on the adoption of software process technologies by 608 US based corporations. This study—which had circumstances quite favorable to aggregation—found that aggregating across three innovations within a technology class more than doubled the variance explained compared to single innovation models. Aggregating across assimilation stages had a slight positive effect on predictive validity. Taken together, these results provide initial confirmation of the conclusions from the conceptual analysis regarding the circumstances favoring aggregation.

Speed-to-Market is cited as being vital in today’s competitive, uncertain and turbulent environments. Scholars and industry professionals alike assert that companies can achieve competitive advantages by launching their product faster than their competitors. However, this paper presents a slightly different perspective on speed-to-market by considering another aspect of the speed equation-speed-to-learn or fast learning in new product development (NPD) teams. We assert that although speed-to-market can increase the probability of new product success, speed-to-learn is one of the critical factors that allows teams to get to market rapidly and be more successful. In this study, we propose a model for fast team learning in new product development based on constructs borrowed from accelerated learning models or suggestopedy in the individual learning scholarship. We then empirically test the model on 171 new product teams. We argue that 1) fastlearning teams launch new products quicker with an increased probability of success. And 2) specific mechanisms that are within the teams ’ control can help teams learn faster. Mechanisms uncovered include: vision clarity, learning from customer and competitor, and information coding.

In many industries, firms are looking for ways to cut concept-to-customer development time, to improve quality, and to reduce the cost of new products. One approach shown to be successful in Japanese organizations involves the integration of material suppliers early in the new product development cycle. This involvement

Geographically distributed, inter-organisational product development projects are becoming increasingly common. However, companies face challenges in managing this kind of complicated projects. Most of the challenges are related to communication. This study focused on communication needs, problems and practices in distributed interorganisational product development projects. The main objective was to identify and describe successful communication practices. In addition, the study aimed to increase the understanding of the communication needs behind the practices, as well as to identify communication problems and unsuccessful practices. From the methodological point of view, studying daily communication in distributed projects is challenging. In this study we experimented with the usage of social process simulation as a tool to study communication. Methodologically, the research was a qualitative multiple-case study consisting of 12 case projects. The cases were grouped into two separate studies according to the industry. Study 1

While our field has done commendable work putting forward new ideas in operations strategy, we have historically done a less effective job validating concepts after their introduction. Given this issue, we attempted to test and extend one of the most influential OM configurations — Miller and Roth’s [Management Science 40 (1994) 285] taxonomy of manufacturing strategies. Their taxonomy was longitudinally replicated with a newer set of North America Manufacturing Futures data as well as an entirely different global sample. Our replications partially supported Miller and Roth’s taxonomy of three strategy-types (Caretakers, Marketeers, and Innovators), but found no evidence of the two underlying dimensions of manufacturing strategy that they called market scope and differentiation. Interestingly, the Marketeers were replaced in the 1990s by a new strategy called Designers, and three other unique manufacturing strategies were identified in the global data. © 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Highly innovative and entrepreneurial firms, those generating ideas aimed at new and enhanced products, manufacturing processes and services, require entrepreneurial leaders who successfully manage the innovation process to discover or create, and then exploit opportunities (Oster, 1994: Venkataraman & Shane, 1998). This paper investigates whether innovations, categorized into incremental and radical, could be arranged in a progressive hierarchy of ascending order according to scope and scale. We examined environmental characteristics (dynamism); organizational characteristics (age, size and intrafirm linkages); organizational processes (improvisation, experimentation and transitioning); and managerial characteristics. Our findings suggest that a different mix of environmental and organizational characteristics and processes explain incremental and radical innovation. Highly innovative and entrepreneurial firms, those generating ideas aimed at new and enhanced products, manufacturing processes, and services, require entrepreneurial leaders who successfully manage the innovation process to discover or create, and then exploit opportunities (Oster, 1994: 302: Venkataraman & Shane, 1998). The innovation processes of those highly innovative and entrepreneurial firms is influenced by a number

decision making perspective Keywords Decision-making, innovation, new service development process, mobile telecommunication services, information processing, case study research Abstract Many service companies active in high tech sectors have implemented largely decentralized decision architectures in their innovation processes. This is done to improve responsiveness under extremely dynamic and uncertain business conditions. As a consequence of the empowerment of decision-makers at the product management level, the success of the New Service Development (NSD) process will increasingly depend on individual product managers ’ information processing and decision-making performance. The present study investigates antecedents of decision-making effectiveness in the high tech NSD process, and reports on a case study performed in the mobile telecommunication services industry. NSD project managers ’ unique task conditions are articulated, and some antecedents and moderators of effective decision-making are identified in a study of four innovation projects. Findings are integrated in a theoretical framework. The study reveals the crucial role of decision-makers ’ flexible use of various cognitive styles, their proactive attitude, and their

We study how firms ’ use of in-licensing for their initial entry to a business domain can detract from the performance of subsequent autonomous endeavors in the domain. We argue that in-licensing produces high levels of causal ambiguity about factors that drive the performance achieved with the licensed product. As a result, the experience that firms gather through pre-entry licensing is likely to generate superstitious learning and overconfidence that undermine the performance of licensees ’ subsequent independent operations. The biases will be particularly strong in the face of contextual dissimilarity. We find consistent evidence in a study of firms that entered the global aircraft industry between 1944 and 2000. The research helps advance the understanding of the benefits and costs of markets for technology.

We surveyed 172 technology entrepreneurs to explore links between learning style and learning flexibility and decision making behaviors hypothesized to produce entrepreneurial innovation and success. Our findings reveal a system of entrepreneurial learning and innovation with subtle and surprising interactions between learning processes and behavioral mediators.

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