Lurching towards innovation: an alternative to technology push vs. market pull

Summary form only given. Over the winter and spring of 1990/91 the authors were part of a three-person team engaged in a study of nine firms in the UK in which directors and senior executives were asked about the strategies, structures, and capabilities in their organizations which aided innovativeness. The authors discuss the problems firms had in integrating technological advances with market opportunities. In a number of cases they found the phenomenon known as lurch. Where market-led firms were suddenly exposed to a nonincremental technological advance, for example, a development in information technology, the power of particular departments suddenly shifted, and those with the relevant technical expertise became dominant. Market pressures ceased to have an impact for a time. Similarly, some technology-driven firms seemed to drift out of line with market requirements until they were brought back with a lurch by the marketeers gaining political ascendance in the organization. The authors have examined how firms might reduce these lurching behaviors in order to be innovative in ways which integrate market opportunities and new technological possibilities