The economic implications of exaptation

By Nicholas Dew, S. Sarasvathy, Sankaran Venkataraman. 2003

224 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract.Accounts of economic change recognize that markets create selective pressures for the adaptation of technologies in the direction of customer needs and production efficiencies. However, non-adaptational bases for technological change are rarely highlighted, despite their pervasiveness in the history of technical and economic change. In this paper the concept of exaptation -a feature co-opted for its present role from some other origin - is proposed as a characteristic element of technological change, and an important mechanism by which new markets for products and services are created by entrepreneurs. Exaptation is a missing but central concept linking the evolution of technology with the entrepreneurial creation of new markets and the concept of Knightian uncertainty.

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c7d42ff61b9bd59b3051af1e5a8fc2d3f968f9c4

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Citations in the corpus

Bridging Behavioral Models and Theoretical Concepts: Effectuation and Bricolage in the Opportunity Creation Framework (2016, unknown): “Literature on effectuation has touched upon a similar concept before: exaptation (Dew, Sarasvathy, and Venkataraman, 2004).”
Recognizing Opportunities for Sustainable Development (2011, background): “…the opportunity recognition literature focuses on prior knowledge of markets (McKelvie & Wiklund, 2004; Shane, 2000; Shepherd & DeTienne, 2005; Zahra, Korri, & Ji, 2005), technology (Dew et al., 2004; Gregoire, Barr, & Shepherd, 2009; Shane, 1996), and business in general (Davidsson & Honig, 2003).”
Resources and bridging: the role of spatial context in rural entrepreneurship (2018, result): “In line with prior research (Alsos, Carter, and Ljunggren 2014; Baker and Nelson 2005; Dew, Sarasvathy, and Venkataraman 2004), we found that considerable entrepreneurial agency was exercised to re-combine resources creatively and uniquely.”
The Coevolution of Institutional Entrepreneurship: A Tale of Two Theories (2010, unknown): “First, entrepreneurship research has long contended that the discovery of entre-preneurial opportunities is dependent upon the distribution of knowledge in society (Dew, Sarasvathy, & Venkataraman, 2004; Hayek, 1945; Shane & Venkataraman, 2000).”
Outlines of a behavioral theory of the entrepreneurial firm (2008, background): “Such transformation processes are known as exaptations, a term derived from the literature in evolutionary biology, where it is becoming increasingly popular (Gould and Vrba, 1982; Gould, 2002; Dew et al., 2004; Wikipedia, 2006).”
Acquisitions As Exaptation: The Legacy of Founding Institutions in the U.S. Commercial Banking Industry (2010, unknown): “Our study suggests that an organization can successfully navigate environmental changes to the extent to which it has “features [that can be] coopted for their present role from some other origin” (Dew et al., 2004: 69).”