The DOI matches its Crossref record; 42 of the 42 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
The Illegitimacy of Successful Product Innovation in Established Firms
Abstract
This paper reports on a theory building effort to understand the persistent difficulties with successful product innovation in large, established firms. Drawing on an institutional approach, we suggest that the constituent activities of effective product innovation either violate established practice or fall into a vacuum where no shared understandings exist to make them meaningful. Product innovation, therefore, is illegitimate. This means that to enhance their innovative abilities, managers must weave the activities of product innovation into their institutionalized system of thought and action, not merely change structures or add values. We use insights from 134 innovators to identify the different ways that product innovation is illegitimate, and to consider alternate ways to overcome these problems. Exploratory results suggest that successful product innovators experience as many instances of illegitimacy as others, but creatively reframed their activities more often to legitimate their work. We conclude with some new insights for why barriers to innovation exist in large, established firms, and how those barriers can be managed.
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Cites
Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony
Meyer, J. W., & Rowan, B. (1977) · American Journal of Sociology · doi:10.1086/226550 · Cited by 28,308
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The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research
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Interest and Agency in Institutional Theory
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The Role of Institutionalization in Cultural Persistence
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Cited by
Technological capability, strategic flexibility, and product innovation
Zhou, K. Z., & Wu, F. (2010) · Strategic Management Journal · doi:10.1002/smj.830 · Cited by 1,362
Integrating R&D and Marketing: A Review and Analysis of the Literature
Griffin, A., & Hauser, J. R. (1996) · Journal of Product Innovation Management · doi:10.1111/1540-5885.1330191 · Cited by 1,299
DOUGHERTY, D., & HARDY, C. (1996) · Academy of Management Journal · doi:10.2307/256994 · Cited by 1,152
Self-citationChatterjee, D., Grewal, R., & Sambamurthy, V. (2002) · MIS Quarterly · doi:10.2307/4132321 · Cited by 945
Innovation Speed: A Conceptual Model of Context, Antecedents, and Outcomes
Kessler, E. H., & Chakrabarti, A. K. (1996) · The Academy of Management Review · doi:10.2307/259167 · Cited by 847
Metadata
- Authors
- Dougherty, D., & Heller, T.
- Venue
- Organization Science
- Published
- 1994-05
- Volume
- 5
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 200-218
- ISSN
- 1047-7039 (ISSN-L)
- 1526-5455
- OpenAlex
- W2130112122
- Cited by
- 455
- References
- 42
- FWCI
- 28.49
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
