Different types of technological innovations affect performance trajectories in different ways. On the one hand, sustaining technologies tend to main… - Joseph L. Bower

[Firms rotate managers ] across functional and divisional lines to help build cooperative climate and contribute to the development of generalist viewpoints... [This practice moves] managers at the business level... where new strategic ideas are developed... every two to three years.

One approach to identifying technologies is to examine internal disagreements over the development of new products or technologies. Who supports the project and who doesn't? Marketing and financial managers, because of their managerial and financial incentives, will rarely support a disruptive technology. On the other hand, technical personnel with outstanding track records will often persist in arguing that a new market for the technology will emerge-even in the face of opposition from key customers and marketing and financial staff. Disagreement between the two groups often signals a disruptive technology that top-level managers should explore.

Our findings support many of the conclusions of the resource dependence theorists, who contend that a firm's scope for strategic change is strongly bounded by the interests of external entities (customers, in this study) who provide the resources the firm needs to survive.