Impact of External Learning and Organizational Flexibility on Radical Innovation

This paper studied the theories of external learning, organizational flexibility and radical innovation, presented a conceptual model and relevant hypothesis. On analyzing the effective sample data from 682 enterprises of different industries across 10 provinces and cities in China, the empirical results showed that external learning is conducive to organizational resource flexibility and competence flexibility, organizational resource flexibility is non-conducive to radical innovation, but it is more appropriate for high competent flexible corporation to undertake radical innovation. This reflects that strengthening external learning is conducive to improve organizational resource flexibility and competence flexibility, thus is helpful to promote organizational radical innovation as well enhance organizational survival and development capacity.