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Industrial and Corporate Change, Volume 11, Number 5, pp. 1059-1084
© 2002 Oxford University Press

Finding the organizational sources of technological breakthroughs: the story of Hewlett-Packard's thermal ink-jet

Lee Fleming

Correspondence: Lee Fleming, Harvard Business School, Morgan Hall T97, Boston, MA 02163, USA. Email: lfleming{at}hbs.edu.

Abstract

Which firms are more likely to invent technological breakthroughs, such as Hewlett-Packard's invention of the thermal ink-jet? I induct theory for this question by interpreting the history of the breakthrough as a recombinant and boundedly rational search process. The firm increased its odds of success by generating many high-variance inventive trials; it mixed and juxtaposed diverse technologies, professions and experience, managed by objective and collocated. The firm exploited this variance with effective selection processes, strong socialization norms, deep experience with the components of invention, rapid prototyping and testing, and scientific knowledge and method.


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