Giant leaps or small steps?

Introduction
A wide body of literature tries to indentify the most efficient innovation strategies Our purpose is to investigate how and under which circumstances radical or incremental innovation is most relevant and efficient

Dichotomous Perspective

Based on Garcia and Calantone (2002) - Continuous( Incremental: small steps) innovation - Discontinuous( Radical: giant leaps) innovation

Incremental innovation

Incremental strategies are defined to result in highly innovative products, providing new features, benefits, or improvements to the existing technology in the existing market
(Garcia and Calantone 2002)

Continuous innovation: - limited to mature markets - limited structure - real-time communication - experimentation with low- cost probes - rhythmically choreographed transitions succeed in high-velocity setting (Brown and Eisenhardt 1997)

Radical innovation

Radical innovation strategies are defined as embodying new technology and often resulting in new markets infrastructure
(Garcia and Calantone ,2002)

- propensity of a firm to introduce new products that incorporate substantially different technology from existing products and can fulfil key customer needs better than existing products - Willingness to cannibalize currents products .... Requirement for radical innovation.
(Chandy and Tellis,1998)

Radical Vs Incremental

Knowledge Resources: Dominant Predictor

(Dewar and Dutton 1986)

Knowledge Resources: Less Important Predictor

(Dewar and Dutton 1986)

Cooperation with universities and research institutes

(Todtling et al.,2009)

Customers and suppliers knowledge

(Todtling et al.,2009)

Semi- structures
(Brown and Eisenhardt, 1997)

Focus on top management

(Brown and Eisenhardt, 1997)

Stable market and compete in technical, sophisticated industries

(Banbury and Mitchel, 1995)

Radical

Incremental

Another perspective:
An artificial world: interaction of organizations and consumers Incremental experiment: isomorphism Radical experiment: for a loser radical innovation strategy can diverse the situation

(Lu and Chen, 2010)

Conclusion

Punctuated equilibrium model of change: long periods of small incremental changes can be interrupted by brief periods of discontinuous radical change
(Brown and Eisenhardt,1997)

..so maybe the answer is in the middle

References

Brown, Shona L. and Kathleen M. Eisenhardt(1997), The art of continuous change: Liking complexity theory and time-paced evolution in relentlessly shifting organizations, Administrative Science Quarterly,42,p.1-34 Bandury, C.M, and Mitschel,W. (1995), The effect of introducing important incremental innovations on market share and bussiness survival, Strategic Management Journal , 16 special issue (161 Chandy, Rsjesh K. And Gerard J. Tellis(1998), Organizing for radical product innovation: The overlooked role of willingness to cannibalize, Journal of Marketing research, Vol.35,No. 4,p.474-487 Dewar, Robert D. And Jane E. Dutton(1986), The adoption of radical and incremental innovations: an empirical analysis, Management Science, Vol. 32, No 11,p.1422-1432 Garcia, Rosanna and Roger Calantone(2002), A critical look at technological innovation typology and innovativeness terminology: a literature review, The journal of Product innovation management 19,p.110-132 Te- Tsai Lu and Jong- Chen Chen(2010), Incremental or radical? A study of organizational innovation: An artificial world approach, Expert systems with applications 37, p. 8193-8200 Todtling, Franz, Ptrick Lehner and Kaufmann (2009), Do different types of innovation rely on specific kinds of knowledge interaction?, Technovation 29, p.59-71

Thank you for your attention!