The Importance Of Architectural Innovation In Kasper And Clark

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Innovations are traditionally categorized into solely two groups, radical innovation and incremental innovation. However, Henderson and Clark felt that these two groups provide little insight on minor innovations that creates tremendous impact on the industry. Therefore, they bring forth a concept called architectural innovation, to classify innovations that modify the way in which components of a product are linked together while keeping the fundamental design concept the same. It is essential for firms to recognize the importance of architectural innovation in order to stay competitive because the failure to distinguish this innovation will result in the loss of market shares as shown by the example of Kasper and Canon.
Henderson and Clark proposed that once a dominant design has been determined, the architectural knowledge of that product is instilled in the organization’s knowledge information- processing procedures. Firms will tend to focus on the improvement of components rather than the linkage between them. In the event of an architectural innovation by their competitor, firm...

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