Sensing opportunities in dynamic markets: how to encourage all employees to take part

摘要

Our insights introduce a novel idea that if employees are exposed to a culture of opportunity sensing, it can help organizations build up their dynamic capabilities and possibly gain a long-term competitive advantage. Our main argument rests on the notion that harnessing the abilities of employees to sense and seize opportunities is a valuable intangible organizational asset. We highlight the significance of personal rules of thumb that have a great potential to form a company's dynamic ability to sense and seize opportunity in high-velocity markets. In stable, slowly changing markets, the role of personal ruleofthumb is not as critical because the opportunity capturing process is normally regulated by detailed and standardized routines. However, when the dynamism of markets intensifies, the magnitude of one's cognitive shortcuts intensifies as well. Therefore, the ability to apply personal rules of thumb no longer should be viewed as only one person's ingenuity. In rapidly changing environments, they become an organization's asset.