Publications
Publications
- Fall 2024
- MIT Sloan Management Review
The Three Traps That Stymie Reinvention: Organizational Identity, Architecture, and Collaboration Can Be Either Assets or Liabilities to Pursuing Growth in New Sectors
By: Ryan Raffaelli
Abstract
In more than a decade of researching innovation, I have observed how organizations respond to new opportunities, technological changes, or unexpected market shifts that threaten to upend their current business model. This process, which I call reinvention, may occur proactively or reactively. In interviews, focus groups, and workshops with 1,451 individuals who faced reinvention dilemmas across a broad array of sectors, I have found that a core challenge of reinvention is that an organization’s past success can either be the greatest asset or the chief liability to its future. The article introduces three traps that can limit a company’s ability to find new avenues for growth: organizational identity, architecture, and collaboration. It highlights how to avoid them by laying the appropriate communications groundwork to foster a coherent identity, setting up new organizational structures, and paying close attention to interpersonal dynamics at the team and individual level.
Keywords
Innovation And Strategy; Change Leadership; Collaboration; Architecture; Transformation; Disruption; Leading Change; Innovation Strategy; Identity; Organizational Culture; Organizational Structure
Citation
Raffaelli, Ryan. "The Three Traps That Stymie Reinvention: Organizational Identity, Architecture, and Collaboration Can Be Either Assets or Liabilities to Pursuing Growth in New Sectors." MIT Sloan Management Review 66, no. 1 (Fall 2024): 46–52. (Cover story.)