Q2. What is the key prescription of the ambidexterity literature for encouraging innovation in established?
Despitestructural separation being a key prescription of the ambidexterity literature for encouraging innovation in established corporations, such separation can also engender organizational dysfunctions that could derail successful commercialization of new technologies; thereby severely compromising structural ambidexterity.
Q3. What is the key pathway to manage these tensions?
A key pathway to manage these tensions is known in the literature as structural orarchitectural ambidexterity where organizations can simultaneously manage short-term efficiency and long-term growth through the structural separation of exploration and exploitation activities in different business units; each with their own alignments and capabilities (Tushman & O’Reilly, 1984; 1996).
Q4. What was the reason for the inertial tendencies of Xerox?
These inertial tendencies arose from the routinized, learned, tacit nature of Xerox’s established capabilities (Winter, 2003); particularly as these had led Xerox to competitive success in prior years.
Q5. What is the role of the network in fostering innovation ambidexterity?
Lin et al. (2013) for example found that firms that combine the three attributes of intra-organizational learning, inter-organizational partnering (strategic alliances), and an open culture that facilitates learning, are effective in fostering innovation ambidexterity (simultaneous accomplishment of both incremental and radical innovation).
Q6. What is the dominant approach to ambidexterity?
One dominant approach involves structural ambidexterity, where exploratory units are separated from the broader organization to allow them to align their competencies toward accomplishing innovation (Tushman and O'Reilly, 1996).
Q7. What contributed to the persistence of routine rigidity?
The absence of credible challenges to the dominant logic that would foster the necessary unlearning to enable new learning to take place (Bettis & Prahalad, 1995) contributed to the persistence of routine rigidity.
Q8. What was the main reason for the focus on the copier business?
Given that developing a new product was an expensive process and potential markets for new technologies were seen as small and uncertain, managers focused even more resources on the copier business (Pake, 1986; Uttal, 1983).
Q9. What is the definition of a competency trap?
According to Levitt and March (1988: 322) “a competency trap can occur when favourable performance with an inferior procedure leads an organization to accumulate more experience with it, thus keeping experience with a superior procedure inadequate to make it rewarding to use”.
Q10. What are the characteristics of dynamic capabilities?
Eisenhardt and Martin (2000) note that dynamic capabilities take the form of specific processes such as product development or decision making.
Q11. What was the first computer to feature graphical user interfaces?
The ALTO computer was the first to feature graphical user interfaces (GUI) with icons and overlapping windows, Bitmap displays and WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) word processors.
Q12. What was the main reason for the lack of a clear route to profits?
With a dominant market share and high levels of risk aversion, Xerox wasn’t prepared totake a risk on technologies that were not fully ready for the market and that presented no clear route to profits (Chesbrough, 2002; Rao, 2011).
Q13. What was the first commercially available set of workstations?
This was the first commercially available set of workstations to feature a graphical user interface, icons and a mouse and offered ease of use that no other system at the time was able to offer (Regani, 2005; Hiltzik, 2002).