Memories that shaped an industry
Memories that shaped an industry
Creating the computer: government, industry, and high technology
Creating the computer: government, industry, and high technology
Father, son & co.: my life at IBM and beyond
Father, son & co.: my life at IBM and beyond
Building IBM: shaping an industry and its technology
Building IBM: shaping an industry and its technology
The innovator's dilemma: when new technologies cause great firms to fail
The innovator's dilemma: when new technologies cause great firms to fail
Strategies for survival in fast-changing industries
Management Science
IBM: Colossus in Transition
Being Efficiently Fickle: A Dynamic Theory of Organizational Choice
Organization Science
The Computer Industry (Emerging Industries in the United States)
The Computer Industry (Emerging Industries in the United States)
Identifying Situated Cognition in Organizations
Organization Science
Inertia and Incentives: Bridging Organizational Economics and Organizational Theory
Organization Science
Structuring the Information Age: Life Insurance and Technology in the Twentieth Century
Structuring the Information Age: Life Insurance and Technology in the Twentieth Century
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Technological innovation sometimes requires industry incumbents to shift to a completely new core technology. To successfully navigate a technological transition, firms often face the ambidextrous challenge of “exploiting” existing complementary assets to support the new “exploratory” core technology. We argue that an industry incumbent attempting to make a transition to a new technology requires linkages between organizational units responsible for developing the new technology and units in charge of complementary assets needed to commercialize the innovation. These linkages are critical but overlooked elements of organizational ambidexterity. This paper develops a conceptual framework in which the ability to build and leverage organizational linkages involving the new technology and its complementary assets is essential for a successful technological transition. The framework also highlights the importance of middle management in creating and maintaining these linkages, which are critical to dynamic capabilities in technological transitions. We identify four critical influences---economic, structural, social, and cognitive---on managerial linking activity that enable firms to transition to a new technology while utilizing valuable preexisting capabilities. The technological transitions of IBM and NCR illustrate the importance of organizational linkages and managerial linking activity.