Management Papers

Document Type

Journal Article

Date of this Version

10-1-2002

Publication Source

California Management Review

Volume

45

Issue

1

Start Page

50

Last Page

66

DOI

10.2307/41166153

Abstract

What is discontinuous about the moment of radical technological change? We suggest that the discontinuity typically does not lie in a radical advancement in technology itself; rather, the discontinuity stems from a shift of an existing technical lineage to a new domain of application. Seeming revolutions such as wireless communication and the internet did not stem from an isolated technical breakthrough. Rather, the spectacular commercial impact was achieved when an existing technology was re-applied in a new application domain. We use the biological notion of speciation events, which form the basis for the theory of punctuated equilibrium, to reconcile the process of incremental change within a given line of technical development with the radical change associated with the shift of an existing technology to a new application domain. We then use this lens to explore how managers can cope with, and potentially exploit, such change processes.

Copyright/Permission Statement

Ron Adner & Daniel A. Levinthal, The Emergence of Emerging Technologies, California Management Review (45:1) pp. 50-66. Copyright © 2002 SAGE. Reprinted by permission of SAGE Publications.

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Date Posted: 19 February 2018

This document has been peer reviewed.