Pre-adaptation, exaptation and technology speciation: a comment on Cattani (2006) *

Nicholas Dew

Industrial and Corporate Change, 2007, vol. 16, issue 1, 155-160

Abstract: A recent article in this journal by Cattani ( 2006 ) pointed out that some part of a firm's technological knowledge base may be accumulated without anticipation of its subsequent uses but may later prove to have valuable applications. He called this technological pre-adaptation . This comment suggests that pre-adaptation is a confusing concept and offers an alternative term—exaptation—that might better describe the process Cattani refers to. Copyright 2007 , Oxford University Press.

Date: 2007
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/icc/dtl036 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:oup:indcch:v:16:y:2007:i:1:p:155-160

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Industrial and Corporate Change is currently edited by Josef Chytry

More articles in Industrial and Corporate Change from Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().