Untangling the origin of strategic innovation A System Dynamics Approach

摘要

Innovation in strategic positioning enables companies to redefine the way to do business delivering more non-monetary value to customers with a high level of operational effectiveness; often, strategic innovators can change the competitive dynamics of industry and can influence the industry evolution processes [Baden-Fuller and Stopford, 1994; Markides, 2000]. Thanks to these flows of innovations they can remain competitive and achieve profitable growth within the current competitive environment, characterised by discontinuity, instability and uncertainty [D'Aveni, 1994]. The central problem in strategic innovation literature is to understand how it is possible to generate a constant rate of strategic initiatives that can contribute to the renewal of company strategy. To answer to this question we built a System Dynamics [Forrester 1961 and 1968; Sterman, 2000] simulation model to represent strategic innovation process integrating the results of studies on technical innovation and corporate entrepreneurship. Our main proposition is that the ability of a company to generate and implement innovation in strategic positioning is determined by three factors. Firstly it is related to the ability to govern the technical innovation process and in particular the development and diffusion of technical capabilities. Secondly strategic innovation processes occur in firms characterised by a certain degree of entrepreneurial orientation. Entrepreneurial orientation is deeply influenced by the introduction of organisational innovations that allow the release of the entrepreneurial energy embedded in the organisational structure. Thirdly, technical innovations become strategic innovations only if top managers are able to manage a process of integration through which they integrate new technical initiatives into the company's strategy. The paper has been structured into three parts. The first step is dedicated to the exploration of the feedback relation between corporate entrepreneurship and strategy; the goal is to develop the theoretical basis for defining strategic innovation. In the second step the "stock and flow" model is presented. The third part is dedicated to simulation and results discussion.