ABSTRACT
For many years now, the complexity of innovation phenomena has been documented in a wide range of scholarly studies. Each study typically takes its own frame of reference and unit of analysis, which can range across the genesis of individual innovations, the development of whole technologies interpreted as a sequence of related innovations; the behaviour of innovating organisations, typically firms; or the activities of individual innovators. All have found their mark in the literature, and it will help to begin with a small number of examples. In their path-breaking work, Carter and Williams (1957) undertook many case studies of innovations in British firms, which led them to a characterisation of the progressive firm in terms of no less than twenty-four dimensions. In this, they pre-figured much of the subsequent interest of innovation scholars. They drew attention to the importance of a firm’s external connections with the world of science and technology, the quality of its training and recruitment activities, and the degree to which selling policy and technical services to customers supported its innovative efforts. They also drew attention to the importance of trained, lively and receptive management and judged that the technically progressive firm would be of good quality in general. In reaching their conclusions, they had also noted the wide differences between firms in their innovative performance and the apparent lack of a clear relationship between progressiveness and performance. Nonetheless, they felt confident enough to conclude in a way that is thoroughly modern in its ring. The progressive firm linked its R&D closely with production and sales policies, it enjoyed close connections with suppliers and customers and it paid close attention in its recruitment policy to attract good minds. Success, they opined, built on success and, conversely, backwardness had a tendency to be self-perpetuating, the lowquality firm having neither the resources nor the reputation to attract and keep creative minds. The studies of Langrish et al. (1972) and Freeman et al. (1972) came to remarkably similar conclusions, in relation to the role of external connections and the internal connectedness of R&D with marketing activities. The recent study by Kunkle (1995), on the comparative records of GE and RCA at developing a commercial electron microscope in the United States, provides a clear-cut example of the Carter and Williams thesis.
