ESSAYS ON FIRMS USING RESOURCES IN DIVERSE WAYS AND THE IMPACT OF SUCH USE ON INNOVATION PERFORMANCE

[摘要] In this multi-essay, mixed-methods dissertation, I explore how firms exploit their resources in diverse ways and how doing so enables them to improve their innovation performance. In Essay 1, I identify a paradox: scholars have argued organizations need knowledge from distant categories (often dissimilar to their knowledge base) to successfully innovate, while others have argued that organizations need knowledge to be similar to their knowledge base in order to absorb it and improve innovative performance. I explore this paradox in organizations using familiar components that have also been used in distant categories as a mechanism to identify and comprehend knowledge in those same categories. I argue that even as the similarity between knowledge is drastically reduced, absorption can be achieved through a distant category link. Having demonstrated how exploiting familiar resources in diverse ways can enhance a firm’s ability to innovate, in Essay 2, I introduce an inductive case study of an organization seeking to make use of a familiar resource in variety of ways. In doing so, I provide case-based evidence for how a firm can expand a familiar resource into new uses. I conceptualize resource use as a process of constructing functional relationships between resources and environmental targets. Using a grounded theoretical approach, I developed a quasi-dimensional process model of the emergence of simple and coordinated resource functionalizing. From this model, I argue that the relationship between a firm’s experience with a resource and its ability to innovate with the resource can be better understood by examining the complex and quasi-dimensional paths through which the firm puts the resource to use.

[发布机构] Rice University

[效力级别] Exploitation