IDENTITY AND STRATEGY AS A DUALITY: THE CASES OF IBM AND CORNING IN THE COMMERCIALISATION OF FIBER OPTIC TECHNOLOGY

Linda Tegarden (), Yolanda Sarason and Ellen Krupar ()
Additional contact information
Linda Tegarden: Associate Professor Emerita of Management, Pamplin College of Business, Virginia Tech, United States
Yolanda Sarason: ��Associate Professor Entrepreneurship and Strategic Management, College of Business, Colorado State University, United States
Ellen Krupar: ��Associate Professor Entrepreneurship and Strategic Management, College of Business, Colorado State University, United States

International Journal of Innovation Management (ijim), 2022, vol. 26, issue 02, 1-25

Abstract: There is a growing understanding of how incumbent firms successfully commercialise nascent technology. However, there is less understanding of why firms follow their disparate strategic trajectories. We draw upon insights in the organisational identity literature to investigate why IBM and Corning commercialised the fiber optic technology differently, given they were both technology-driven diversified corporations and initiated high investments in fiber optics when it was beginning to commercially emerge in communications. Our qualitative study investigates how and why that IBM’s customer-focused identity and Corning’s science-focused identity explain why they entered the fiber optic market along such distinct trajectories. We explore the relationship between identity and strategy as a duality, in that they cannot be understood as separate and distinct from each other but are as two sides of the same coin. We offer that understanding this relationship yields insights into why and how firms can follow different trajectories in the successful commercialising of nascent technology.

Keywords: Organisational identity; strategy; nascent technology; technology commercialisation; fiber optic; qualitative investigation; multi-case method; duality vs. dualism; incumbent competitors; IBM; Corning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S1363919622500190
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:wsi:ijimxx:v:26:y:2022:i:02:n:s1363919622500190

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from

DOI: 10.1142/S1363919622500190

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Innovation Management (ijim) is currently edited by Joe Tidd

More articles in International Journal of Innovation Management (ijim) from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tai Tone Lim ().