Doctoral Dissertation Research: Dynamics of Technological Innovation: Incumbents' Adaptation and Capability Building on the Internet

这项研究考察了老牌公司如何适应技术创新，如互联网，以及此类创新的绩效影响。具体的研究问题是：相对于过去的经验，当前的创新努力对一家公司的技术采用速度、技术采用的全面性和创新回报的影响有多大？后来的采用者，由于过去的创新经验而处于劣势，如何通过增加创新努力来迎头赶上？尽管理论上一直强调动态能力对组织的适应性至关重要，但大多数实证研究都认为组织是沿着过去的经验决定的路径和范围内发展的。正如文献中广泛研究的那样，本研究在过去积累的经验的基础上增加了新兴能力的新维度。新兴能力捕捉到了公司在做出采用决定后是如何组织创新的。这项研究将创新视为一个随时间演变的动态过程，并评估了企业能够直接影响其创新过程的程度，以及过去的经验(初始能力)决定创新路径和方向的程度。动态能力视角用于揭示企业能力是如何随着时间的推移而出现、发展和变化的，以及企业如何整合和重新配置内部和外部能力以应对技术和环境变化。对电子商务经理的采访和对新闻稿和行业期刊等档案数据来源的审查，将有助于了解公司的采用过程。此外，该项目还包括对600多家美国金融机构负责互联网活动/电子商务运营的高级管理人员进行的大规模调查。尽管开始时前景看好，但许多创新从未带来回报，反而消耗了大量资源。因此，这项研究为企业通过协作和/或整合现有能力和新开发的能力，以及通过内部和外部创新相关能力发展创造价值的方式提供了重要的新见解。此外，还将研究后来的采用者在创新实施过程中设法迎头赶上的方式。本研究分析了企业在互联网环境下的各种适应策略和创新成果。这项研究将评估互联网实施决策相对于先前经验和采用时机的重要性，提出创新如何实施比何时采用更重要。这项研究的结果最终将使组织更好地了解如何开发与创新相关的能力以提高创新绩效，以及如何避免实施降低从创新中获益的可能性的战略。

This research examines how established firms adapt to technological innovations, such as the Internet, as well as the performance implications of such innovations. The specific research questions are: How strongly do current innovative efforts, relative to past experience, influence a firm's speed of technology adoption, the comprehensiveness of its technological adoption, and the returns to innovation? How can later adopters, disadvantaged by past innovation experience, catch up by increasing their innovative efforts? Although there has been strong theoretical emphasis on dynamic capabilities as critical to the adaptability of organizations, most empirical research has viewed organizations as evolving along paths and within boundaries determined by past experience. This study adds the new dimension of emerging capabilities to that of past-accumulated experience as widely studied in the literature. Emerging capabilities capture how firms organize for innovation once the decision for adoption has been made. This research views innovation as a dynamic process evolving over time and assesses the degree to which firms can directly influence their innovation process versus the degree to which past experience (initial capabilities) determines the path and direction of innovation. The dynamic capabilities perspective is used to reveal how firm capabilities emerge, develop, and change over time, as well as how firms integrate and reconfigure internal and external competencies to respond to technological and environmental change. Interviews with e-business managers and reviews of archival data sources, such as press releases and trade journals, will shed light on firms' adoption processes. Additionally, the project includes a large-scale survey of senior executives in charge of Internet activities/e-business operations at more than 600 U.S. financial institutions.Although promising at the outset, many innovations never pay off but rather consume enormous resources. This study thus offers important new insights into the way in which firms create value through collaboration and/or integration of existing with newly-developed capabilities, and through internal versus external innovation-related capability development. Moreover, ways in which later adopters manage to catch up during the innovation implementation process will be examined. This research analyzes firms' various adaptation strategies and innovation outcomes in the context of the Internet. The study will assess the importance of Internet implementation decisions relative to prior experience and timing of adoption, proposing that how an innovation is implemented matters more than when it is adopted. The findings from this research will ultimately provide organizations with a better understanding of how to develop innovation-related capabilities that improve innovation performance, and how to avoid implementation strategies that reduce the likelihood of yielding benefits from innovation.