W1: Tushman & Anderson (1986): Technological Discontinuities and Organizational Environments

Question 1

Paper’s aim

Answer 1

Investigates patterns of technological change and their impact on environmental conditions. It shows that firms who initiate major technological changes grow faster than those who don’t

Question 2

Technology

Answer 2

Defined as those tools, devices, and knowledge that mediate between inputs and outputs (process technology) and/or that create new products or services (product technology)

Question 3

Technological change

Answer 3

Has an unequivocal impact on economic growth and on the development of industries. It is a function of both variety and chance, as well as structure and patterns

Question 4

Dominant design

Answer 4

Reflects the emergence of product-class standards and ends the period of technological ferment. Alternative designs are largely crowded out of the product class, and technological development focuses on elaborating a widely accepted product or process. It becomes a guidepost for further product or process change. Once it emerges, technological progress is driven by numerous, incremental innovations

Question 5

Incremental technological progress

Answer 5

Happens by the interaction of many organisations of many organisations stimulated by the prospect of economic returns, they enhance and extend the underlying technology and thus reinforce an established technical order

Question 6

Competence-destroying

Answer 6

Destroy the competence of existing firms in an industry. It requires new skills, abilities, and knowledge in both the development and production of the product

Question 7

Competence-enhancing

Answer 7

Enhance the competence of exisiting frims in an industry

Question 8

Competence-destroying product discontinuity

Answer 8

Either creates a new product class or substitutes for an existing product

Question 9

Competence-destroying process discontinuities

Answer 9

Represent a new way of making a given product

Question 10

Competence-destroying discontinuities

Answer 10

So fundamentally different from previously dominant technologies that the skills and knowledge base required to operate the core technology shift. They disrupt industry structure. Barriers to entry are lowered, new firms enter previously impenetrable markets by exploiting the new technology

Question 11

Competence-enhancing discountinuities

Answer 11

Order-of-magnitude improvements in price/performance that build on existing know-how within a product class. They tend to consolidate industry leadership; the rich get richer

Question 12

Technological discontinuities

Answer 12

Trigger a period of technological ferment culminating in a dominant design, and leading to the next period of incremental, competence-enhancing, technological change

Question 13

Uncertainty

Answer 13

Refers to the extent to which future states of the environment can be anticipated or accurately predicted

Question 14

Munificence

Answer 14

Refers to the extent to which an environment can support growth. Environments with greater munificence impose fewer constraints on organisations than those environments with resource constraints