Technological capability, strategic flexibility, and product innovation

By Kevin Zheng Zhou, Fang Wu. 2009

1,244 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper examines the role of technological capability in product innovation. Building on the absorptive capacity perspective and organizational inertia theory, the authors propose that technological capability has curvilinear and differential effects on exploitative and explorative innovations. The findings support the proposition that though technological capability fosters exploitation at an accelerating rate, it has an inverted U‐shaped relationship with exploration. That is, a high level of technological capability impedes explorative innovation. Strategic flexibility strengthens the positive effects of technological capability on exploration, such that when strategic flexibility is high, greater technological capability is associated with more explorative innovation. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Subfields: Sociology and Political Science, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1159a87ab6e79c74dcc0dc5aedc0435751e92888

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Citations in the corpus

Linkages between firm innovation strategy, suppliers, product innovation, and business performance: Insights from resource dependence theory (2017, background): “The literature on product innovation argues that contextual variables including the extent of foreign collaboration, company age, current exports, annual revenue, and number of employees impact product innovation (Craighead et al., 2009; Kok and Biemans, 2009; Lau et al., 2010; Zhou and Wu, 2010).”
Innovation Capability: From Technology Development to Transaction Capability (2012, methodology): “The technology development capability allows the firm to choose and to use technology with strategic purposes (Gomel and Sbragia, 2006; Rush et al., 2007), to create new methods, process and techniques (Afuah, 2002), and, mostly, to offer new products (Zhou and Wu, 2010 p.557).”
In Search of Innovation and Customer‐related Performance Superiority: The Role of Market Orientation, Marketing Capability, and Innovation Capability Interactions (2012, result): “Fifth, although the approaches to measuring firm capabilities and firm performance in this study are in line with the existing literature (Morgan et al., 2009; Vorhies and Morgan, 2005; Zhou and Wu, 2010), these objective approaches are limited, especially in cases where the survey questions did not”
Business Model Innovation and Competitive Imitation: The Case of Sponsor-Based Business Models (2013, background): “…so far has focused on the first two types of innovation (e.g., Shan, Walker, and Kogut 1994; Banbury and Mitchell 1995; Eisenhardt and Tabrizi 1995; Schroeder 2006; Katila and Chen 2008; Leiblein and Madsen 2009; Roberts 1999; Adner and Kapoor 2010; Leiponen and Helfat 2010; Zhou and Wu 2010).”
Measuring innovation capability in exporting firms: the INNOVSCALE (2015, background): “By combining formal and flexible approaches, firms overcome organizational inertia and break old routines that often hinder innovations (Zhou and Wu, 2010).”
Utilizing customer knowledge in innovation: antecedents and impact of customer involvement on new product performance (2015, positive): “Organizational support for knowledge management implementa t ion We bor rowed the measures fo r interfunctional coordination from Narver and Slater (1990), and the measures for strategic flexibility from Zhou and Wu (2010).”
Parent Company Benefits from Reverse Knowledge Transfer: The Role of the Liability of Newness in MNEs (2011, background): “Older subsidiaries are more likely to generate new knowledge close to the domain of MNE’s existing knowledge, while younger subsidiaries are more likely to develop new knowledge that lies outside the MNE’s existing knowledge domain (Autio et al., 2000; Lavie & Rosenkopf, 2006; Zhou & Wu, 2010).”
The Transformation of the Innovation Process: How Digital Tools are Changing Work, Collaboration, and Organizations in New Product Development* (2020, positive): “These innovation capabilities are linked to the design of superior products and services (Moorman and Slotegraaf, 1999; Song, Droge, Hanvanich, and Calantone, 2005; Zhou and Wu, 2010).”