Read the summary and the most important questions on Leadership, capabilities, and technological change: The transformation of NCR in the electronic era

• 1 Introduction

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• Which 4 factors explain the failure of market leaders in the face of technological change?

  1. Studies have shown that ‘architectural’ changes in design and ‘competency-destroying’ innovations will be problematic for established leader.
     
  2. A web of implicit and explicit social commitments to employees, customers, and communities also can also impede adaptation to change.
     
  3. Small incumbents and new entrants will have a smaller stake in the current technology than will large incumbents, and therefore have less to lose from cannibalization of the established technology by the new.
     
  4. However, if mature firms have a satisfactory amount of “dynamic capabilities” they will be able to successfully adapt to change and achieve new forms of competitive advantage.
     

• By which 3 classes of factors can a firm's dynamic capability be determined?

  1. Processes—managerial and organizational ‘routines’;
     
  2. Positions—current endowments of technology, customer bases, and suppliers;
     
  3. Paths—available strategic alternatives.

• 2 Results

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• How was the prevailing style of NCR described?

  As formalistic and procedural. 

• 3 Discussion

• What is the main problem of NCR?

  NCR did not exploit computer opportunities as fully as might have been done and it endured a painful crisis in the adaptation of its core product line. 

• How did NCR survive in the face of a technological transition?

  However, survival in the face of a technological transition is no small achievement.
  

  1. Incremental change in product designs
  2. Competence destruction
  3. New value propositions, and
  4. Threats to long-standing social commitments all appear as consequences of new technologies deployed by NCR and as factors shaping its behaviour.
     

• 3.1 Dynamic capabilities

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• What can be said about the NCR story from the dynamic capabilities perspective?

  The signifiance of organizational processes stands out.

• In which sense were the organizational processes within NCR strong?

  In the sense that they were long-standing, robust, and influential. 

• In which sense were the organizational processes within NCR weak?

  Yet they were weak in the sense that they proved to be poorly suited to the new era. 

• What were the characteristics of NCR's established processes for product development, product delivery, and marketing?

  They were hierarchical, ineffective at integration, and slow.

• What dit electronics change?

  They destroyed entry barriers and created rapid change in the customers’ sense of their information needs and in the products available to them. New processes were required to integrate marketing and product development, so that the latter could be driven by customer needs rather than the preferences of ‘expert’ product planners.