Learning While Innovating

Andrew H. Van de Ven and Douglas Polley
Additional contact information
Andrew H. Van de Ven: Strategic Management Research Center, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455
Douglas Polley: St. Cloud University, St. Cloud, Minnesota 56301

Organization Science, 1992, vol. 3, issue 1, 92-116

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.

Keywords: organizational learning; technological innovation; new product development; interorganizational joint ventures; event sequence analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1992
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (57)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/orsc.3.1.92 (application/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:inm:ororsc:v:3:y:1992:i:1:p:92-116

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Organization Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().