Strategic resonance between technological and organisational capabilities in the innovation process within firms

The literature on innovation has been both rich and varied in approach and has provided much insight into the process of, and difficulties contained within, innovation. A number of important concepts including those of path dependency, technological trajectories, together with the plethora of articles concerned with organizational learning, involving the contribution and limitations of tacit knowledge, have helped us to understand the nature of innovation. As important as these strands of literature are, we suggest that a key weakness in much of the literature on innovation is that it does not deal sufficiently with the contextual issues concerning the changing paradigms of manufacturing and the profound impact that these developments have had upon the innovation process. We offer the concept of strategic resonance as a missing ingredient within some firms who are now faced with conditions of hyper competition where ongoing innovation is a key requirement. The concept of strategic resonance is not offered as a prescriptive panacea but it is suggested that firms need to understand and remove the blockages to strategic resonance as part of their innovation development processes. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.