Leveraging Resistance to Change and the Skunk Works Model of Innovation

Andrea Fosfuri and Thomas Rønde
Additional contact information
Andrea Fosfuri: Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
Thomas Rønde: Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen

No 2007-10, CIE Discussion Papers from University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. Centre for Industrial Economics

Abstract: We study a situation in which an R&D department promotes the introduction of an innovation that results in costly re-adjustments for a production department. In response, the production department tries to resist change by improving the existing technology. We show that firms balancing the strengths of the two departments perform better. As a negative effect, resistance to change might distort the R&D department’s effort away from radical innovations. The firm can solve this problem by implementing the so-called skunk works model of innovation where the R&D department is isolated from the rest of the organization. Several implications for managing resistance to change and for the optimal design of R&D activities are derived.

Keywords: resistance to change; innovation; skunk works model; contest (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L2 M12 M54 O31 O32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22 pages
Date: 2005-04, Revised 2007-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-ino, nep-ipr, nep-pr~ and nep-mic
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.econ.ku.dk/cie/dp/dp_2010/2007-10.pdf/ (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.econ.ku.dk/cie/dp/dp_2010/2007-10.pdf/ [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.econ.ku.dk/cie/dp/dp_2010/2007-10.pdf/)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kud:kuieci:2007-10

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CIE Discussion Papers from University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. Centre for Industrial Economics �ster Farimagsgade 5, Building 26, DK-1353 Copenhagen K., Denmark. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Thomas Hoffmann ().