Introduction

What makes firms successful over long periods of time? Many organizational theorists have argued that organizational environments evolve through long phases of incremental change, punctuated by radical transformations. Because changing environments can dramatically alter the basis of competitive success, organizations need to transform their mode of operation to enhance their prospects of future success. Change by itself, however, is not sufficient to deal with shifting criteria of market success: organizations have to change in a speedy manner in order to avoid losing their business to incumbent rivals or new entrants who are able to offer better, cheaper, or radically new products. If organizational decision makers cannot react with sufficient speed to new competitive challenges, attempts to align the organization with a changing environment may come too late and be entirely fruitless.

A large amount of empirical evidence has demonstrated the difficulty of firms to correctly foresee technological developments or even discern these shifts while they are occurring (Maclaurin, 1949; Tushman & Anderson, 1986; Henderson & Clark, 1990). As a result, the speed in which organizations adapt to major environmental changes can represent a crucial factor in reducing or amplifying the negative impact of a lack in technological foresight. The same is true for the case of technological oversights: the faster an Organization responsiveness to environmental shock 261 organization can correct its failure to ascertain shifts in the environment, the better are its chances to limit the damage such oversights can have on the future success of its business.