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Article Dans Une Revue Organization Science Année : 2014

Ambition Is Nothing Without Focus : Compensating for Negative Transfer of Experience in R&D

Xavier Martin
  • Fonction : Auteur
Johannes M. Pennings
  • Fonction : Auteur
Filippo Carlo Wezel
  • Fonction : Auteur

Résumé

Organizations create high-impact inventions when they combine disparate strands of technology in their corporate research and development. We theorize that when undertaking complex inventive search characterized by high breadth, i.e., drawing on multiple diverse technology components, an organization’s propensity toward high-impact inventions depends on its stock of experience with recombining such components and on the focus of its inventive search. Building on learning transfer theory, we argue that the complexity and causal ambiguity of higher-breadth projects is such that experience with similar inventive search will be a poorer guide, comparatively reducing their inventive impact; however, this negative effect can be attenuated by the degree of focus of an organization’s contemporaneous inventive search. Using a longitudinal data set of patents from the photographic imaging industry, we find support for our predictions.
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Dates et versions

hal-02313223 , version 1 (18-03-2020)

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  • HAL Id : hal-02313223 , version 1

Citer

Anindya Ghosh, Xavier Martin, Johannes M. Pennings, Filippo Carlo Wezel. Ambition Is Nothing Without Focus : Compensating for Negative Transfer of Experience in R&D. Organization Science, 2014, 25 (2), pp.572-590 P. ⟨hal-02313223⟩

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