Join us for the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research Seminar Series 22/23, talk with guest speaker Professor Beatrice D’Ippolito, School for Business and Society, University of York, UK
Register to attend via Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/manchester-institute-of-innovation-research-beatrice-dippolito-tickets-507490486707
ENDLESS APPLICATIONS: STRATEGIC MAINTENANCE OF THE WORLD’S MOST ENDURING HERBICIDE TECHNOLOGY
Shane Hamilton
School for Business and Society, University of York, UK
Beatrice D’Ippolito
School for Business and Society, University of York, UK
Abstract:
Technological maintenance is a significant but understudied component of innovation. Maintaining a technology's ability to create and capture value over time can produce sustained competitive advantage. We challenge existing theory in institutional maintenance that defines institutional work as inherently non-economic and non-technical, demonstrating that institutional maintenance and strategic value maintenance can be mutually constitutive. We draw on the case of Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide technology, adopting a historical approach, to conceptualize how firms strategically develop capabilities for maintaining the value of technological assets. The case illustrates the significance of multilevel institutional work for organizations confronting the challenges of preserving and defending technological resources over time and across institutional boundaries. Technological maintenance, when pursued across organizational boundaries and through control over technological knowledge, not only produces strategic advantages for specific firms, but also remaps power relations in society more broadly.
Speaker Bio:
Beatrice D’Ippolito is Professor of Strategic Management and Innovation at the School for Business and Society, University of York, UK. Her research focuses on the emergence and development of mechanisms of knowledge creation and diffusion that connect the micro level of firm dynamics with the meso level of industry evolution. She has conducted extensive qualitative and archival research within organisations of small to large sizes, spanning different empirical domains including, among others, design as a driver for innovation, inter-organisational collaborations as vehicles to knowledge creation, and the strategic opportunities and challenges attached to the advent of digital technologies. Her research appeared in various outlets, including Research Policy, Long Range Planning, Technovation, Industry and Innovation, Creativity and Innovation Management, and Entrepreneurship and Regional Development. Prof D'Ippolito currently sits on the Editorial Advisory Boards of Research Policy and Industry and Innovation and, as of January 2023, she serves as Associate Editor at the Journal of Management Studies.
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The Manchester Institute of Innovation Research runs a series of regular seminars given by visiting speakers to Manchester. These seminars are open to anybody who is interested in science, technology and innovation policy and management.
