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    Team Learning Capabilities: A Meso Model of Sustained Innovation and Superior Firm Performance
    27 Dec 2018Working Paper Summaries

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

    by Jean-François Harvey, Henrik Bresman, and Amy C. Edmondson
    In strategic management research, the dynamic capabilities framework enables a “helicopter view” of how firms achieve sustainable competitive advantage. This paper focuses on the critical role of work teams, arguing that managers must leverage the knowledge generated by teams to support innovation and strategic change. It matches types of team learning to innovation activities.
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    Author Abstract

    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.

    Paper Information

    • Full Working Paper Text
    • Working Paper Publication Date: December 2018
    • HBS Working Paper Number: HBS Working Paper #19-059
    • Faculty Unit(s): Technology and Operations Management
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    Amy C. Edmondson
    Amy C. Edmondson
    Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management
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