Inside Corporate Innovation: Strategy, Structure, and Managerial Skills - Softcover

Burgelman, Robert A.

 
9780029043417: Inside Corporate Innovation: Strategy, Structure, and Managerial Skills
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0029043417 ISBN 13: 9780029043417
Verlag: Free Press, 1988

Inhaltsangabe

The new wave of organizational innovations involves new types of arrangements between individuals and corporations. It is likely to continue to produce new organizational forms, spanning the entire range of combinations of markets and hierarchies and involving complex, sometimes protracted negotiation processes between individuals and corporate entities. Such negotiation processes, we believe, will be an increasingly pervasive aspect of corporate life and an important mechanism for facilitating the new integration of individualism and big business through corporate entrepreneurship.

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Robert A. Burgelman is the Edmund W. Littlefield Professor of Management and the Executive Director of the Stanford Executive Program. He joined the Stanford Business School as an Assistant Professor in 1981. He obtained a Licentiate degree in Applied Economics from Antwerp University, an MA in Sociology, and a PhD in Management of Organizations from Columbia University. He has published articles in leading academic and professional journals, and his books include Inside Corporate Innovation: Strategy, Structure, and Managerial Skills, Research of Technological Innovation, Management and Policy, Strategy Is Destiny: How Strategy-Making Shapes a Company’s Future, Strategic Dynamics: Concepts and Cases, and Strategic Management of Technology and Innovation.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter 1

Internal Corporate Venturing

Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Established Firms

Major changes have taken place in American business during the last 20 years. Self-confidence based on a position of great prestige in the world economy, a sense of being the "best and the brightest," has given way to a position characterized by self-doubt and defensiveness. After World War II, and throughout the 1950s and 1960s, European and Japanese managers trooped dutifully to the United States to visit its corporations and business schools, in order to learn the secrets of success of American business. Many American corporations were seen as invincible leaders in technology, marketing, and organization. For some European observers, the "American challenge" represented a crucial event, requiring fundamental changes in the ways of doing business on the part of the Europeans in order to be able to respond. For other observers, the preeminence of American business was simply viewed as threatening the autonomy and economic welfare of Western Europe if not the rest of the world.

During the 1970s, the tables turned dramatically, and during the first half of the 1980s, the theme of "Managing Our Way to Economic Decline" has dominated the headlines in the American business press. American management has been seeking to catch up and learn new skills and new approaches to both new and traditional problems related to managing large, complex business organizations. Among the criticisms that have stung American executives are accusations that their organizations are bureaucratic, inadequately innovative, too slow to adapt, and inflexible. At the same time, critics have argued that the capacity of these organizations to efficiently manufacture high-quality goods has also greatly diminished.

The New Industrial Context

It would, of course, be naive to propose that the relative decline of some parts of American business is solely due to ineptitude on the part of managers of established firms. At least three other major sets of forces should be considered when attempting to diagnose the relative decline.

First, and perhaps most important, major shifts in relative comparative advantage in factors of production may underlay a good deal of the problems encountered by basic American industries. Reich, for instance, has cogently argued that American comparative advantage may lie in more quick-changing, customized product and technology development, rather than in the highly routinized, mature industries where relative labor cost disadvantages can no longer be overcome by capital improvements. The fact that Japan currently experiences similar pressures as a result of Korean and Taiwanese competition in certain areas may underscore this point.

Second, as the research of Abernathy and Utterback has suggested, some of the setbacks of organizations may be the result of the very logic of technological development: The forces driving the exploitation of existing technological opportunities structurally impede the development of new ones. The classic example is, of course, the American automobile industry. Hence, the large aggregations of people and capital represented by the traditional large firms may do well enough, even superbly, when mass production, strict routines, and tightly controlled procedures can be used to attack relatively stable and very large markets. The emphasis of such organizations is, most naturally, on process innovation and improved manufacturing capabilities, not on new-product development.

Third, many observers agree that the technological foundations for many of the high-flying industries of the 1950s and 1960s are now being replaced by new ones -- electronics and biotechnology being the most salient examples -- and that fresh and different approaches are required to develop the new entrepreneurial opportunities offered by these new technologies. Emphasis on new-product development and fast-moving strategic positioning and repositioning is essential here. Not surprisingly, new firms have been more adept at performing the entrepreneurial function than established ones. As a result of the "Silicon Valley" effect, entirely new geographic areas are emerging as loci of industrial development.

American industry shows great vigor in these new areas of technology. New-firm formation has been rather spectacular, stimulated in part by the enormous influx of venture capital that occurred after the capital gains tax changes of 1978. Established firms, however, continue to struggle to find management approaches for returning to real growth derived from internal development rather than from acquisitions.

Some Proposed Solutions

Corresponding to these major shifts in the industrial and organizational environments and the recognition of significant managerial shortcomings, various solutions and approaches have recently been proposed.

Some scholars have focused on the problems of industry maturity and the competitiveness of manufacturers. Abernathy and associates have made a useful study of the concept of "de-maturity," or the possibility of changing industry dynamics to a point where product technology and innovation can again become tools for creating a competitive advantage. Some recent changes in the automobile industry, for instance, seem to provide a basis for believing that such an "industrial renaissance" is possible. Recognizing the difficulties of bringing about massive change in established organizations, General Motors has proposed utilizing a newly created, completely autonomous division to produce its new "Saturn" subcompact. By so doing it hopes to protect the required new technologies and work methods from being diluted by existing management routines and procedures. A major element in "de-maturity" concerns improving competitiveness in the area of operations and manufacturing management. As Hayes and Wheelwright have recently suggested, this will require in many cases the full integration of considerations related to operations and manufacturing at the highest levels of firms' strategic management.

Other scholars have focused on the broader learning and adaptation capacities of established organizations. Lawrence and Dyer, for instance, present an elaborate discussion of organizational renewal, including recommendations for management-union and management-government relations, geared toward making organizations both efficient and innovative. Ouchi has made a strong plea for enlightened teamwork at the interorganizational level, drawing on some lessons from Japanese as well as American firms (e.g., Hewlett-Packard) that have effectively combined hierarchical, market, and clan-type elements in their management process (clan-type arrangements being based on long-term relationships of mutual aid and sharing and the expectation that all will share equitably in any gain -- in contrast to short-term, individualized incentives).

Peters and Waterman have documented some of the approaches used by consistently high-performing U.S. companies. Some of these authors' recommendations center around the importance of encouraging individuals to experiment, the utilization of "skunk works" (i.e., small groups of zealots working "under the table"), and the capacity of the organization to operate while involved in a continuous learning process. Kanter documents the important role played by middle managers who can initiate both laterally and upward to create change in spite of bureaucratic impediments. Kanter describes the individuals who effectively create change within firms as hard-driving persons who possess an astute awareness of organizational politics, while Peters and Waterman urge top management personnel to effect change by "hanging loose." These two views are in sensible opposition to the now-dated picture of a small number of...

„Über diesen Titel“ kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Verlag
Free Press
Erscheinungsdatum
1988
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0029043417
ISBN 13 
9780029043417
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
228
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar