Corporate Explorer Fieldbook

CORPORATE EXPLORATION: INSIGHTS FROM THE FIELD

Michael Tushman

AS AN UNDERGRADUATE in electrical engineering at Northeastern University, I participated in its co‐op program for which the school is rightly famous. It gave me not only intensive classroom time, but also hands‐on work experience. My co‐op assignment for four years was with the firm General Radio, at that time a leader in automatic test equipment, and already a 50‐year‐old company. During my time at General Radio, HP and Tektronics initiated several major technological advances in test equipment design and production. General Radio had no answer for these competitive provocations, which precipitated a crisis for the company. After a shift in strategy, structure, and culture, General Radio reemerged as GenRad, a different company, quite unlike the one that I had joined. As a budding electrical engineer, I had experienced my first example of reactive punctuated change.

General Radio had to experience a crisis before it could adapt to the market. I was profoundly puzzled that a company with all the resources of a successful enterprise and staffed with brilliant engineers should struggle, so hard and so unsuccessfully, to shape its fate. This experience led me to three critical questions that have shaped my subsequent career as a scholar of innovation and change and as an advisor to firms at technological junctures. Why is it that successful firms like General Radio frequently fail at the moments of industry transition? ...