Technology Exam

1. To what degree do you think the creativity of the firm is a function of the creativity of individuals, versus the structure, routines, incentive, and culture of the firm? Provide an example of a firm that does a particularly good job at nurturing and leveraging the creativity of its individuals.

The creativity of a firm is connected to the creativity of the individuals of the firm. The structure, routine, incentive, and culture of the firm should be designed to enhance and support the creativity of the individuals. One firm that does a great job nurturing and leveraging the creativity of individuals is Pixar. The entire building is designed to encourage unplanned collaboration, employees can literally create their own office cubical, and different departments are mixed together to encourage new ideas.

1. Several studies indicate that the use of collaborative research agreements is increasing around the world. What are some reasons collaborative research is becoming more prevalent?

The significance of collaboration has been recognized globally. Collaborative research is crucial in high-technology sectors where more perspectives/resources are needed. The largest source of innovation is a result of collaboration.

Cassandra Archibald

Tech

Chapter 3

1. What are some reasons that established firms might resist adopting a new technology?

If a new technology is considered too radical, a firm may resist adopting it until it is more incremental. Also, if the new technology is considered competence destroying for the firm, the firm will resist adopting the technology. If the new technology results in a architectural innovation of the firm, the firm will resist adopting the technology.

1. Are well-established firms or new entrants more likely to (a) develop and/or (b) adopt new technologies? Why?

Well-established firms are more likely to develop and adopt new technologies as they have more capital. New entrants tend to have limited resources and cannot place much risk on new technologies. For an established firm, there is still a risk when developing/adopting new technologies but it’s not as great.

1. Think of an example of an innovation you have studied at work or school. How would you characterize it on the dimensions described at the beginning of the chapter?

My work recently updated from a very old version of Windows to Windows 7. I would say the dimensions that characterize this change would be a process innovation, radical innovation, and competence-enhancing innovation. The idea of the update was to improve the way our organization conducts business which is clearly a process innovation rather than a product innovation. Windows has been out for quite awhile and normally updating a program to the newest version would be considered an incremental innovation. However, because of how old the system we were using was, I would consider this change to be radical as there were many differences between the two programs. Finally, the purpose of the change was to make the business more efficient/updated so I would say it’s competence-enhancing rather than destroying.

1. What are some reasons that both technology improvement and technology diffusion exhibit s-shape curves?

Technology improvement The initial improvement is slow and then accelerates then has diminishing improvement. At first, performance improvement is slow due to the fundamentals of the technology being poorly understood. As this improves, the technology gains legitimacy and improvement begins to be accelerate. At some point, a peak is hit and diminished returns being to occur creasing an s-curve.

Technology diffusion s-curves are created by plotting the cumulative number of adopters of the technology against time. The adoption is slow in the beginning as the new technology is brought to the market. As the technology becomes more familiar, it accelerates. Eventually, the market becomes saturated so the rate of new adoptions declines.