This paper focuses on dynamic capabilities and, more generally, the resource-based view of the firm. We argue that dynamic capabilities are a set of specific and identifiable processes such as product development, strategic decision making, and alliancing. They are neither vague nor tautological. Although dynamic capabilities are idiosyncratic in their details and path dependent in their emergence, they have significant commonalities across firms (popularly termed ‘best practice’). This suggests that they are more homogeneous, fungible, equifinal, and substitutable than is usually assumed. In moderately dynamic markets, dynamic capabilities resemble the traditional conception of routines. They are detailed, analytic, stable processes with predictable outcomes. In contrast, in high-velocity markets, they are simple, highly experiential and fragile processes with unpredictable outcomes. Finally, well-known learning mechanisms guide the evolution of dynamic capabilities. In moderately dynamic markets, the evolutionary emphasis is on variation. In high-velocity markets, it is on selection. At the level of RBV, we conclude that traditional RBV misidentifies the locus of long-term competitive advantage in dynamic markets, overemphasizes the strategic logic of leverage, and reaches a boundary condition in high-velocity markets. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Dynamic capabilities, what are they?

This paper draws on the social and behavioral sciences in an endeavor to specify the nature and microfoundations of the capabilities necessary to sustain superior enterprise performance in an open economy with rapid innovation and globally dispersed sources of invention, innovation, and manufacturing capability. Dynamic capabilities enable business enterprises to create, deploy, and protect the intangible assets that support superior long- run business performance. The microfoundations of dynamic capabilities—the distinct skills, processes, procedures, organizational structures, decision rules, and disciplines—which undergird enterprise-level sensing, seizing, and reconfiguring capacities are difficult to develop and deploy. Enterprises with strong dynamic capabilities are intensely entrepreneurial. They not only adapt to business ecosystems, but also shape them through innovation and through collaboration with other enterprises, entities, and institutions. The framework advanced can help scholars understand the foundations of long-run enterprise success while helping managers delineate relevant strategic considerations and the priorities they must adopt to enhance enterprise performance and escape the zero profit tendency associated with operating in markets open to global competition. Copyright  2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Explicating dynamic capabilities: the nature and microfoundations of (sustainable) enterprise performance

Co-Planar Stereotaxic Atlas of the Human Brain—3-Dimensional Proportional System: An Approach to Cerebral Imaging, J. Talairach, P. Tournoux. Georg Thieme Verlag, New York (1988), 122 pp., 130 figs. DM 268

Defining ordinary or ‘zero-level’ capabilities as those that permit a firm to ‘make a living’ in the short term, one can define dynamic capabilities as those that operate to extend, modify or create ordinary capabilities. Logically, one can then proceed to elaborate a hierarchy of higher-order capabilities. However, it is argued here that the strategic substance of capabilities involves patterning of activity, and that costly investments are typically required to create and sustain such patterning—for example, in product development. Firms can accomplish change without reliance on dynamic capability, by means here termed ‘ad hoc problem solving.’ Whether higher-order capabilities are created or not depends on the costs and benefits of the investments relative to ad hoc problem solving, and so does the ‘level of the game’ at which strategic competition effectively occurs. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Understanding dynamic capabilities

Emotion and Adaptation

The INSEAD–Wharton Alliance on Globalizing: Globalization through acquisitions and alliances: an evolutionary perspective

This chapter discusses the practical challenges and opportunities involved in merging the two fields of cognitive neurosciences and strategic management, starting from the premise that the need to marry them is justified by their complementarities, as opposed to the level of analysis on which they both focus. We discuss the potential benefits and drawbacks of using methods borrowed from cognitive neurosciences for management research. First, we argue that there are clear advantages in deploying techniques that enable researchers to observe processes and variables that are central to management research, with the caveat that neuroscientific methods and techniques are not general-purpose technologies. Second, we identify three core issues that specify the boundaries within which management scholars can usefully deploy such methods. Third, we propose a possible research agenda with various areas of synergy between the complementary capabilities of management and neuroscience scholars, aiming to generate valuable knowledge and insight for both disciplines and also for society as a whole.

Cognitive neurosciences and strategic management: Challenges and opportunities in tying the knot

This study develops a theoretical explanation for the existence of positive, as well as negative, experience spillovers across corporate development activities. We suggest that the similarity in two activities influences both the sign and magnitude of experience spillovers. The argument is used to understand how alliance experience influences the performance of acquisitions in the US commercial banking industry. The empirical evidence indicates that the spillover effect of alliance experience on acquisition performance is a function of the decisions made in the post-acquisition phase regarding the level of integration and the replacement of top management. We also find a U-shaped relationship between alliance experience and acquisition performance, suggesting the presence of negative spillovers across corporate development activities at low experience levels.

Experience Spillovers across Corporate Development Activities

Previous literature has shown that the relationship between accumulated experience and performance of a focal task is more complex than how it has been represented by the learning curve pattern. Ex...

Stakeholder Engagement and Organizational Experiential Learning: Evidence from M&A

How do ownership networks among business enterprises evolve over time? What roles do corporate governance reforms and privatization programs play in shaping the structural characteristics of these networks? This article addresses these questions by leveraging on small-world analysis techniques applied to the ownership networks among Italian enterprises in 1990 and 2000. Italy underwent a significant program of privatizations over the decade under study, coupled with changes in the corporate law aimed at strengthening the defense of minority shareholders. The data show signs of significant fragmentation of the overall network, but at the same time of stability in the structure of its main component, as measured by small-world coefficients. Further, the role of the key players in the network seems to remain relatively stable despite the major turbulence at the institutional level as well as in the structural characteristics of the complete network.

Maurizio Zollo

Papers

The INSEAD–Wharton Alliance on Globalizing: Globalization through acquisitions and alliances: an evolutionary perspective

Cognitive neurosciences and strategic management: Challenges and opportunities in tying the knot

Experience Spillovers across Corporate Development Activities

Stakeholder Engagement and Organizational Experiential Learning: Evidence from M&A

Small Worlds Evolving: Governance Reforms, Privatizations, and Ownership Networks in Italy