III. ACQUIRE AND FORGET: THE CONFLICT OF INFORMATION
3.5 Discussion
innovations, Delta seeks to acquire information from both of these groups. The importance of seeking both groups is seen by the following anecdote:
“A physician may tell a patient to use a particular device if efficacious even if it is hard to use or poorly designed. By focusing on the
physician and not on the user, some user needs go unmet…the medical needs may be met, but the ancillary needs of the patient are missed.
Thus, the subtle things that make a product better are missing. This also becomes a problem if the patient input is obtained too far downstream in the NPD process.”
Highlighting the problem of OM and IA, Delta manufactures a device the size of a dime, but they have the technology, i.e. a radical innovation, to make devices that are half of that size. Their OM has fixed on the concept that smaller is better in this market, so they believed that they should continue to develop innovations allowing for smaller devices. Despite this drive to make smaller devices, information acquired from the market revealed that the products could become too small for customers to manage, manipulate, and implement. In this situation, OM led to setting one direction for the product development, while the IA indicated a different direction. The experience of Delta demonstrates the conflict of IA and OM in support of both hypotheses one and two.
circumstances, the sub-components of OL may drive a firm’s behavior in different directions. In the case of radical innovations and the uncertainty associated with them, IA levels are high, while longer terms of OM hinder the development of radical
innovations.
3.5.1 Firms seek increased levels of information
For high levels of uncertainty in the environment, firms attempt to relieve their uncertainty by acquiring information in proportion to the uncertainty (Souder and Moenaert 1992). Consider AlphaCorp’s successful IA and BetaCorp’s lack of IA. (See Table 3-2.) Both firms developed products under uncertain conditions, but only
AlphaCorp sought the information necessary to refine the product for the customer.
Consequently, Alpha’s product was successful while, according to the project manager, Beta’s product was withdrawn from the market. This result is predicted by the
information processing and knowledge based views of the firm.
3.5.2 Organizational memory length is shorter for radical innovations
At a time when the firm is driven to obtain more information, logic dictates that remembering old information as well as that which is newly acquired would be
important. For the turbulent and uncertain environments in which radical innovations are formed, this behavior is counterproductive. Gamma Medical established a difference between the information and guidelines generated from the information. These product development guidelines imposed the traits of successful past projects on those products of the future. A firm with a long memory attempts to integrate old memories into their NPD
process, those memories that were formed prior to the uncertain and dynamic environment. It is the more recent memories that are required to develop radical innovations.
3.5.3 Tension between information acquisition and organizational memory
A conflict arises from the organizational memory of the firm. Delta reflects the conflict of IA and OM, but they were able to recover from this conflict prior to releasing a product. This suggests that a comparison must be made between the information acquired and the organizational memory. Figure 3-2 presents a revised OL model that includes a comparison of the firm’s level of OM and their IA. After assessing the memory needs of the firm, long for a certain environment versus short for an uncertain environment, the feedback loop allows the firm to adjust their IA needs. So, in a turbulent environment conducive to radical innovations, shorter memories limit the dilution of newly acquired ideas by older memories.
These results contribute to findings in the literature on the customer involvement in disruptive innovations (Christensen and Bower 1996). Christensen and Bower suggest that the customer should not be involved in the NPD of radical innovations because they will lead a firm to develop incremental innovations. They argue that customers are unable to understand or conceptualize of radical innovations, and that the “average”
information from the customer leads to incremental innovations. This research suggests that OM may be a contributing factor to Christensen and Bower’s findings. Perhaps it is the firm relying upon old and irrelevant memories that leads to incremental innovations.
A June 7th, 2005 Wall Street Journal article, highlighted the situation for firms developing radical innovations. Toselli of Johnson & Johnson stated that “physicians, in general, are suspicious of new technology.” This hesitancy to adopt new technologies only serves to increase the market and technology uncertainty for developing firms.
Given the overall economic variability of the market, the optimal levels of IA and OM for these firms developing radical innovations remains enigmatic.
This research is a preliminary step in the study of the IA and OM of the firm during the new product development of radical innovations. Future research requires further refinement of the model, particularly in the area of memory classification and assessment.
Additionally, future research of this topic should be conducted to demonstrate the generalizability of the research problem.