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• Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2018

  Team Learning Capabilities: A Meso Model of Sustained Innovation and Superior Firm Performance

  Jean-François Harvey, Henrik Bresman and Amy C. Edmondson

  This paper complements the manager-centered analysis of dynamic capabilities with a team-based approach focused on team learning. We argue that team learning capabilities intertwine with managerial cognitive capabilities to support the processes of sensing, seizing, and reconfiguring. We draw from the literature on team learning to develop four categories based on the orientation (exploration/exploitation) and locus (internal/external) of learning in teams: reflexive, experimental, contextual, and vicarious learning. We integrate these categories into the dynamic capabilities framework to show their particular relevance at different points along the sensing-seizing-reconfiguring pathway and assess their potential impact on innovation and strategic change. The framework contributes by adding a meso lens to research on dynamic capabilities to help scholars better understand how learning that occurs in teams may support entrepreneurial managers in enacting their cognitive capabilities in service of sustained innovation and superior firm performance.

  Keywords: dynamic capabilities; strategic change; Groups and Teams; Learning; Innovation and Invention; Performance;

  Citation:

  Harvey, Jean-François, Henrik Bresman, and Amy C. Edmondson. "Team Learning Capabilities: A Meso Model of Sustained Innovation and Superior Firm Performance." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 19-059, December 2018.  View Details

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• Case | HBS Case Collection | July 2018

  Leading Open Innovation at BT

  Amy C. Edmondson, Jean-François Harvey and Johnathan R. Cromwell

  This case focuses on the genesis and development of the open innovation unit at BT, the strategic value of the unit, and its operating model. As the business environment becomes increasingly dynamic and firms are pressured to achieve faster innovation rates, there may be accompanying shifts in the way they pursue innovation. This case illustrates the challenges that this poses to large corporations as well as the key activities the open innovation unit engages in to deal with them. In particular, it must manage relationships with various stakeholders to leverage the value of matching external ideas and technologies with internal resources and capabilities. The case poses the question: Should the open innovation unit fully incubate some ideas, instead of always seeking partnership with commitment from a customer-facing unit?

  Keywords: collaboration; open innovation; inter-organizational relationships; collaborative Innovation and Invention; Organizational Culture; Collaborative Innovation and Invention; Innovation and Management; Information Technology Industry; Technology Industry; United Kingdom; United States;

  Citation:

  Edmondson, Amy C., Jean-François Harvey, and Johnathan R. Cromwell. "Leading Open Innovation at BT." Harvard Business School Case 619-013, July 2018.  View Details

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• Chapter | How Could this Happen? Managing Errors in Organizations | 2018

  The Strategic Imperative of Psychological Safety and Organizational Error Management

  Amy C. Edmondson and Paul Verdin

  Despite discussion in the management literature about agile organizations or learning organizations, many large organizations are top-down, slow to change, and fraught with obstacles to learning. We describe “strategy-as-learning” to contrast with the traditional concept of “strategy-as-planning.” Practicing the work of organizational strategy as a learning process implies eschewing a set of firm decisions and preconceived courses of action. Instead, strategy formulation and execution develop from setting a direction and posing a set of questions to be defined, refined, and iteratively answered. Strategy-making is thus about developing and advancing hypotheses to be tested. In this context, psychological safety plays a crucial role in shaping the quality of strategy-as-learning, as psychological safety enables speaking up, error reporting, dissenting, and candidly discussing risks. Without these behaviors, especially at the executive levels, organizations are at risk of strategic failures that could have been avoided.

  Keywords: Strategy; Learning; Safety; Organizational Culture; Performance Consistency;

  Citation:

  Edmondson, Amy C., and Paul Verdin. "The Strategic Imperative of Psychological Safety and Organizational Error Management." In How Could this Happen? Managing Errors in Organizations, edited by Jan U. Hagen. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.  View Details

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