Alessandro Giudici

Dynamic capabilities in the dock: A case of reification?

In his award-winning So!apbox essay, Donald Hambrick observed that the strategic management field ‘is rapidly being pulled apart by centrifugal forces. Like a supernova that once packed a wallop, our energy is now dissipating and we are quickly growing cold’ (2004: 91), and included dynamic capabilities as one of the constructs that appeared to be most detrimental to the field’s stability. At first sight, as scholars interested in dynamic capabilities, we conceded that Hambrick appeared to be right. Navigating the literature we encountered a plethora of dynamic capability definitions, a countless number of capability types (e.g. R&D, marketing, etc.) labelled as ‘dynamic’ and a variety of formulaic expressions under the generic umbrella of ‘to adapt and change firms need dynamic capabilities’. Yet, after nearly two decades, a rising number of over 100 articles, special issues and conference presentations (Di Stefano et al., 2010) seem to suggest that dynamic capabilities were, instead, one of the centripetal forces that helped keep the field together. So we were faced with a puzzle: were dynamic capabilities the last flash of the dying supernova, or could they rather save strategic management from its anticipated self-destruction? More recently, dynamic capability research appears to have become an academic conversation polarized between equally passionate critics and supporters. Perhaps a paramount example is the exchange between Arend and Bromiley (A&B) and Helfat and Peteraf (H&P) on the future of dynamic capabilities published in Strategic Organization in 2009: whereas A&B suggested that the dynamic capability construct should be abandoned due to its weak theoretical foundations and inconsistencies, H&P called for further developmental efforts given the infancy of the field and its growing relevance. Not surprisingly, this paradigmatic match between advocates of rigour and defendants of relevance (Hirsch and Levin, 19991) has regularly appeared in Strategic Organization’s2 ‘Most-Read’ rankings, together with Hambrick’s (2004) call for the consolidation of strategic management. How to solve this dilemma, then: should we discard dynamic capabilities or persist with them? In the face of the possibility of either the demise of strategic management (Hambrick, 2004) or the discovery of its ‘Holy Grail’ (H&P, 2009: 99), we decided to let the evidence speak for itself. In this essay, we intervene in the debate between A&B and H&P to propose that a specific developmental process of conceptual and empirical work might explain their different assessment of dynamic capabilities. A remarkable number3 of prior reviews on dynamic capabilities have focused on conceptual inconsistencies and contradictions (e.g. Barreto, 2010), but have not taken fully into account the effects of a process which often leads researchers to cease ‘to specify the assumptions that underlie the concept or construct and treat it like a general-purpose solution to an increasing 457977 SOQ10410.1177/1476127012457977Strategic OrganizationGiudici and Reinmoeller 2012

Successful scaling in social franchising: The case of Impact Hub

Social entrepreneurs increasingly use franchising to scale social value. Tracey and Jarvis described how social franchising is like commercially-oriented franchising, but noted critical challenges arising from dual goals. We investigate a social franchisor that overcame these challenges and describe how the social mission became the source of business model innovation. We show that the social mission fostered a shared identity that guided the search for adaptations to the franchise model. The shared mission-driven identity created pressure toward (1) decentralized decision-making, (2) shared governance, and (3) a role for the franchisor as orchestrator of collaborative knowledge sharing among franchisees. Findings should help social franchisors avoid common pitfalls and suggest future research questions for social entrepreneurship and franchising scholars.

Customer Engagement Mechanisms: Strategies for Value Creation and Value Capture

Traditional strategy has given too little attention to the demand side view, in particular it has not paid sufficient attention to innovation at the customer-firm boundary. We draw on the literatur...

Pioneering strategies in the digital world. Insights from the Axel Springer case

Abstract Digital technologies present some distinctive characteristics; they simultaneously enable pervasive connectivity, immediacy of interactions and wide access to data and computing power. Based on a detailed historical analysis of Axel Springer, we suggest that pioneering strategies in new markets created by the diffusion of digital technologies are negatively moderated by the fit between firms’ legacy core capabilities and those required to enter the new market. We then show that pioneering strategies in non-core legacy markets are instrumental in creating the capabilities necessary for the sustainability of first-mover advantages (FMA) in the legacy core markets. Finally, we show the role of managerial cognition as a key individual-level enabler in achieving pioneering advantages.

Business Models and Value

We identify the business model as the mechanism that explains how a firm engages with consumers to create and capture value. We look into the literatures of marketing, strategy, entrepreneurship to identify 4 important – mutually exclusive - theoretical types: dyadic product; dyadic solutions; triadic matchmaking; and triadic multi-sided. Each of these business model types implies a different set of behaviors by the consumer; different actions by the firm; and give rise to differences in value for the consumer; profit opportunities for the firm; different organizational designs and corresponding entrepreneurial pathways. Our paper draws on and extends the current literature on the demand side perspective and effectuation.

Designing and implementing innovative business models

In this chapter we introduce the concept of business model and business model innovation and provide some guidelines for designing “good” business models. Since this task is generally challenging in that it requires particularly creative reconfigurations, we will also discuss some of the key difficulties that firms may experience when trying to innovate their business model. Reflecting the richness of business model research, we will present three different perspectives. Next, we describe some real-world examples of different business models, and discuss the main reason why incumbents are often slow to react to new business models. We provide two illustrative cases. The first shows how Blockbuster found very difficult to respond to severe disruption in its market created by the innovative business models introduced by new entrants. The second briefly presents the innovative business model of Naked Wines.