Pierpaolo Andriani

Perspective---From Gaussian to Paretian Thinking: Causes and Implications of Power Laws in Organizations

Although normal distributions and related current quantitative methods are still relevant for some organizational research, the growing ubiquity of power laws signifies that Pareto rank/frequency distributions, fractals, and underlying scale-free theories are increasingly pervasive and valid characterizations of organizational dynamics. When they apply, researchers ignoring power-law effects risk drawing false conclusions and promulgating useless advice to practitioners. This is because what is important to most managers are the extremes they face, not the averages. We show that power laws are pervasive in the organizational world and present 15 scale-free theories that apply to organizations. Next we discuss research implications embedded in Pareto rank/frequency distributions and draw statistical and methodological implications.

From exaptation to radical niche construction in biological and technological complex systems

Biological adaptation assumes the evolution of structures toward better functions. Yet, the roots of adaptive trajectories usually entail subverted—perverted—structures, derived from a different function: what Gould and Vrba called “exaptation.” Generally, this derivation is regarded as contingent or serendipitous, but it also may have regularities, if not rules, in both biological evolution and technological innovation. On the basis of biological examples and examples from the history of technology, the authors demonstrate the centrality of exaptation for a modern understanding of niche, selection, and environment. In some cases, biological understanding illuminates technical exaptation. Thus, the driver of exaptation is not simply chance matching of function and form; it depends on particular, permissive contexts.

Developing and managing strategic partnerships

Abstract This paper reports the empirical work carried out in the first stage of a three year Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) funded project. The first stage of the project: “The Development of Partnership Strategies” is the subject of this paper; it is concerned with testing, in an inter-firm context, a technique which has been validated in an intra-firm context. The technique is concerned with identifying the nature, strength, and sustainability of competitive advantage in terms of the features which customers value, the intangible resources which produce these features and the development scenarios for each key intangible resource. The companies collaborating in the research include: Flymo Ltd. (Electrolux) and Cellnet plc (British Telecom.).

Measuring Exaptation and Its Impact on Innovation, Search, and Problem Solving

Exaptation, the emergence of latent functionality in existing artifacts, is an underexplored mechanism of novelty generation in innovation. In this paper, we measure the frequency of exaptation in the pharmaceutical industry. We find that about 42% of new functions derived from existing drugs have an exaptive nature. We think that this constitutes the first measure of exaptation in any industry. We also link exaptation with radical innovation and find that most radical innovations in our sample are exaptive. Also, nearly all radical innovations occur in market areas very distant from the drug’s original market. We propose that exaptive innovation constitutes a different search mechanism and problem-solving approach from deliberate innovation and discuss the role of context and serendipity in innovation.

MODELLING THE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT OF VIRTUAL KNOWLEDGE NETWORKS: SOME EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE

This paper will report the results of empirical, web-based research on the knowledge processes that take place in a virtual environment which has been created by the convergence between the telecommunications and information technologies. The analysis of some virtual knowledge networks (VKNs) is presented; the 34 analyses focus on the network properties of both nodes and links. These properties give information on a new general model of VKNs that describes the multilevel structure of virtual networks. An interpretation of VKNs is proposed, which makes use of the complexity theory.

OPERATIONALISING KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT CONCEPTS: THE DEVELOPMENT OF A TECHNIQUE FOR SHARING KNOWLEDGE IN NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS

This paper will summarise some of the main concepts and theories which have been developed in the area of Knowledge Management and will adapt these to develop a new technique for sharing knowledge in a new product development project. The bulk of the literature on Knowledge Management has been concerned with concepts and theory, there is relatively little concerned with the operationalisation of the concepts. This paper will report the results of the testing of a new technique in an ex post case study which was carried out at Flymo Ltd. The research project has been funded by the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

The evolution of modularity and architectural innovation: web-enabled collective development of a tangible artefact

Can a web-based community of peers autonomously engage in architectural innovation and develop tangible products? We present a theoretical framework that builds upon the idea of product modularisation as a knowledge management tool enabling community collaboration. The framework consists of a community meta-model and a product meta-model; some mechanisms enabling collective innovation are also presented as part of the framework. We then apply the theoretical framework to the real case of a high-performance human powered watercraft showing how the community was able to innovate the artefact evolving its modular architecture.

Exaptation, serendipity and aging

The paper shows the importance of serendipity and exaptation in selected key moments of ageing research and argue that rationalistic dominant models in scientific research have masked the importance of reverse models of discovery based on serendipity and exaptation. I ask why this is the case and analyze three contributing factors: unprestatability of the functions of technologies, multidimensionality and astronomical complexity of the space over which biological reactions occurs and role of scientific paradigms in channeling research toward incrementalism. Empirical evidence of the limits of the rationalistic models are presented next. I close the paper by discussing the implications for aging research.

Performing Comparative Advantage: The Case of the Global Coffee Business

We posit that comparative advantage is discovered via alternative transactional regimes of trading. Transactional regimes are performative, based on different forms of embedded agency. The theory is applied on a study of Brazilian coffee business which manifests the increasing importance of specialty coffee. Innovations in the transactional regime have created new forms of agency which triggered new ways to produce coffee and to activate the hidden potential of variety in consumer tastes. Comparative advantage, though still driven by endowments with natural resources, relates with very different product characteristics and forms of market organization. This constitutes the performativity of comparative advantage.

Complex analogy and modular exaptation: some definitional clarifications: Theory and Applications

This chapter discusses the complex analogy between biological evolution and technological innovation, focusing in particular on the novel construct modular exaptation. After carefully defining exaptation – a biological concept whose technological analogue is useful in innovation studies – the chapter explores its epistemological bases, arguing that the etiological concept of function – a biological tenet – is valid also in the technological domain. The complex analogy extends to biological and technological functional modules, providing the main building block on which modular exaptation can be founded. Establishing a complex analogy enables the description of the two domains via the same relational structure. In turns this allows the transferability of knowledge from the base domain to the target domain, and vice-versa. The complex analogy can therefore be considered a methodological tool for understanding complex systems in general and technological innovation in particular, as discussed in the final section of the chapter.