Learning While Innovating

Abstract

This paper examines processes of trial-and-error learning during the development of a technological innovation by an interorganizational joint venture created expressly for developing and commercializing products from the new technology. We develop a model of adaptive learning, which incorporates elements from laboratory models of learning and applies them to the field research setting. The learning model focuses on relationships between the goals, actions, and outcomes of an innovation team within the joint venture as it develops the innovation over time, and the influences that environmental events and external interventions by resource controllers in parent companies have on the learning process. The model is tested based on a real-time longitudinal study of the development of a biomedical innovation (therapeutic apheresis) from 1983 to 1988. Different patterns of learning were observed in different periods of innovation development. Event time series analyses clearly contradict the learning model during an initial expansion period, but strongly support the model during a subsequent contraction period. Explanations for why these different patterns of organizational learning occurred over time are provided, and focus on a set of organizational structures and practices which are commonly used to manage innovation development, but which inhibit learning.

Modifications and innovations to technology artifacts

“…New information is then synthesized with the existing conceptualizations and reinforcements or modifications are conducted. Following, Tyre and von Hippel (1997), Van de Ven and Poole (1990), and Van de Ven and Polley, (1992), we focused on specific events as the unit of analysis. The event of interest was the modification of the technology artifact by the user.…”

The Use of Feed-forward and Feedback Learning in Firm-University Knowledge Development: The Case of Japan

“…However, others have also noted structural and environmental factors (March, 1991;Van de Ven and Polley, 1992;Kim, 1993;Nonaka, 1994;Zander and Kogut, 1995;Edmondson and Moingeon, 1996;Inkpen and Crossan, 1996;Schilling and Kluge, 2009). Barriers therefore occur at the levels of individuals, groups, organizations, and environments.…”

R&D partnership portfolios and the inflow of technological knowledge

“…Across these options, the information availability ranges from no information to crude ideas about various technological attributes and their relation to economic payoffs. The sequencing of research steps is unclear ex ante as means-ends connections await establishment and concrete performance information is lacking (Van de Ven & Polley, 1992). Behavioral tendencies of key R&D managers further aggravate the uncertainty because of incentives to over-estimate the rates of return to favored technological paths (Freeman & Soete, 1997).…”

“…Early-stage experimental and applied research is rife with uncertainties and requires the combination and recombination of bits of knowledge that are implicit, poorly objectified, and embedded within the context of individual firms (Kogut & Zander 1992;Van de Ven & Polley, 1992). Recognizing, identifying, and understanding the value of such knowledge will require significant efforts and so the more firms can rely on a basic, pre-established, understanding of their partners, the more they can mitigate any potential information-gathering problems (Kale, Singh, & Perlmutter, 2000;Simonin, 1999;Zollo et al, 2002).…”