Rapid Response Capabilities: The Importance of Speed and Flexibility for Successful Innovation

Christoph Grimpe and Wolfgang Sofka
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Christoph Grimpe: Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW), Mannheim, Germany and K. U. Leuven, Belgium

Chapter 22 in Management of Technology Innovation and Value Creation:Selected Papers from the 16th International Conference on Management of Technology, 2008, pp 359-380 from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.

Abstract: AbstractSpanish fashion retailer ZARA has been the prototype for a new kind of competitive strategy by beating its rivals through superior flexibility and speed to market new products. We define this organizational ability to learn from the market and respond to it with superior speed as a "rapid response capability". We explore its origins conceptually by drawing arguments from the the capability based view of the firm. Based on a sample of 3,360 German companies our empirical results show that rapid response capabilities are either built around exploiting existing absorptive capacities or exploring options given strong environmental pressures from the technological or demand side, but not a combination of both.

Keywords: International Trade/Business; Econometrics; Accounting Regulations; R&D Management; Environmental Engineering; Technology Transfer; Technology Strategy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
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