Architectural Innovation Essay

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ARCHITECTURAL INNOVATION The traditional categorization of innovation as either incremental or radical is incomplete and potentially misleading and does not account for the sometimes disastrous effects on industry incumbents of seemingly minor improvements in technological products. The paper examines such innovations more closely and, distinguishing between the components of a product and the ways they are integrated into the system that is the product "architecture," define them as innovations that change the architecture of a product without changing its components. Architectural innovations destroy the usefulness of the architectural knowledge of established firms, and that since architectural knowledge tends to become embedded in the structure and information-processing procedures of established organizations, this destruction is difficult for firms to recognize and hard to correct. Architectural innovation therefore presents established organizations with subtle challenges that may have significant competitive implications. The distinction between refining and improving an existing design and introducing a new concept that departs in a significant way from past practice is one of the central notions in the existing literature on technical innovation. Incremental innovation introduces relatively minor changes to the existing product, exploits the potential of the established design, and often reinforces the dominance of established firms. Radical innovation, in contrast, is based on a different set of engineering and scientific principles and often opens up whole new markets and potential applications. Radical innovation often creates great difficulties for established firms and can be the basis for the successful entry of new firms or even the redefinition of an industry. Radical and incremental innovations have such different competitive consequences
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