5 Posts found for Author: Oded Shenkar

When a product that has been in development for one year can be copied and brought to market in days, first mover advantage has lost its…well, advantage. Once stigmatized, imitation is now acceptable. In fact, this author says that to stay in the game and not fall behind, firms must imitate. In this article, he describes why imitation is as valuable as innovation, and why … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Oded Shenkar | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subjects: Innovation, Management, Strategy

A comprehensive look at the evidence will show, to the surprise of many, that the economic return to innovation is quite meager and that it has been progressively declining over time, as an extensive review of the literature has shown.

Content: Quotation | Author: Oded Shenkar | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subject: Innovation

To cognitive scholars, the correspondence problem is the central scientific puzzle in imitation. This challenge of converting the imitation target into a copy that will preserve the favorable outcome observed in the original is as relevant for business as it is for the sciences, and no company can hope to become strategically agile without being able to decipher it. For instance, many firms copied General … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Oded Shenkar | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subject: Best Practices

It is surely one of business’s great paradoxes that maybe, just maybe, an innovator might have something to learn from an imitator. However unlikely, it is a truism, and this author describes why an innovator should pay close attention to, and even respect, an imitator. He also describes why and what an imitator can learn from – who else ? – an innovator. In the … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Oded Shenkar | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subject: Innovation

Innovating firms are able to internalize routines that facilitate variation (e.g., improvisation), have combinative capabilities (e.g., are capable of decomposing and recombining different types of knowledge), and can reflect, update, select, assimilate and integrate superior routines and capabilities. They develop routines for exchanging information with suppliers and for appropriating spillovers (which implies imitating activity). Good imitators possess much of the same: They are able to … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Oded Shenkar | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subject: Innovation