SO-06 Imitate or innovate?

Dear reader,

Today I am finally ready to write about one of the compulsory papers. I chose Burgelman (1983), Corporate Entrepreneurship and Strategic Management: Insights from a Process Study as Burgelman tries to explain the strategic process of business activities of large multifaceted companies through a model provided by found literature on entrepreneurship in organizations and on the strategic process. This might help the development of new managerial approaches and innovative understandings for better collaboration between business individuals and the business itself. My Quest will also be focused on a large organization that focuses on new approaches and staying ahead of competition by being innovative.

The article discusses that:
1. Firms need diversity and order to maintain viability;
2. Diversity requires an experimentation-and-selection approach;
3. Strategic recognition is chosen over planning to make sure that entrepreneurial activities correspond with the strategic vision;
4. Management at the top should be concerned with the balance between diversity and order;
5. New approaches and innovative arrangements have to meet up with the association between entrepreneurial members and the organization in which they are active.

The model of Burgelman indicates how a new idea can be the result of diversity. The findings result in the idea that autonomous strategic behavior at levels below top management seems to be the driving force for strategic change. One of the studied theories was of Penrose, who points out at the importance of “alertness” when it comes to opportunities for all entrepreneurial activity. The potential to use opportunities in the model of Burgelman are likely to manifest itself, as the concept of strategy and the connected induced strategic behavior loop are unlikely to tire out. Another found theory was the one of Miles & Snow and Mintzberg about the integration of corporate entrepreneurship and strategic management related to typologies of business’ and of strategic processes (in the form of four types of management) concluded that top management must be capable of dealing with strategy in different modes. The model of Miles & Snow and Mintzberg might not provide enough answer about long-term viability of the firm types. Burgelman states that it is hard to produce an on-real-life based model, and advices further research that would help researchers in economics and organization theory. New approaches and innovative arrangements have to be established for the different organizations and its top and middle managers.

Having done that, I will leave you with a video of Gates and Jobs in a joint interview. Who is the innovator?

http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid452319854/bctid958475626