Ambition Is Nothing Without Focus: Compensating for Negative Transfer of Experience in R&D

Anindya Ghosh (), Xavier Martin, Johannes Pennings and Filippo Carlo Wezel ()
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Anindya Ghosh: Department of Entrepreneurship, IESE Business School, Barcelona 08034, Spain
Filippo Carlo Wezel: Institute of Management, University of Lugano, 6904 Lugano, Switzerland; and EM Lyon Business School, 69130 Ecully, France

Organization Science, 2014, vol. 25, issue 2, 572-590

Abstract: Organizations create high-impact inventions when they combine disparate strands of technology in their corporate research and development. We theorize that when undertaking complex inventive search characterized by high breadth, i.e., drawing on multiple diverse technology components, an organization’s propensity toward high-impact inventions depends on its stock of experience with recombining such components and on the focus of its inventive search. Building on learning transfer theory, we argue that the complexity and causal ambiguity of higher-breadth projects is such that experience with similar inventive search will be a poorer guide, comparatively reducing their inventive impact; however, this negative effect can be attenuated by the degree of focus of an organization’s contemporaneous inventive search. Using a longitudinal data set of patents from the photographic imaging industry, we find support for our predictions.

Keywords: technology recombination; organizational learning; organizational inventive focus; patent citations; photographic imaging industry (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2013.0845 (application/pdf)

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Working Paper: Ambition Is Nothing Without Focus: Compensating for Negative Transfer of Experience in R&D (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ororsc:v:25:y:2014:i:2:p:572-590

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