Converting inventions into innovations in large firms: How inventors at Xerox navigated the innovation process to commercialize their ideas

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/smj.3209
• Date: 01 December 2020
• Author: Rahul Kapoor,Natalya Vinokurova
• Published date: 01 December 2020

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Converting inventions into innovations in large

firms: How inventors at Xerox navigated the

innovation process to commercialize their ideas

Natalya Vinokurova | Rahul Kapoor

Management Department, The Wharton

School, University of Pennsylvania,

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Correspondence

Natalya Vinokurova, Management

Department, the Wharton School,

University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia,

PA.

Email: natalyav@wharton.upenn.edu

Abstract

Research Summary: How can inventors in large firms

navigate their organizations' innovation processes to

commercialize breakthrough inventions? Using histori-

cal case studies of three breakthrough inventions at

Xerox—office workstations, personal computers, and

laser printers, we illustrate how inventors navigated

multiple evaluation criteria across different organiza-

tional units to attract resources toward inventions.

These criteria stemmed from Xerox's first successful

breakthrough invention, the 914 copier and the specific

objectives of the organizational units. We highlight two

approaches deployed by Xerox inventors—searching

across the organization for more favorable evaluation

criteria and shaping the evaluation criteria to help

attract resources. While searching leveraged the hetero-

geneity of evaluation criteria across the different orga-

nizational units, shaping required the presence of

evaluative uncertainty with respect to the appropriate

criteria for evaluating breakthrough inventions.

Managerial Summary: The challenges of commer-

cializing breakthrough inventions in large firms have

been studied extensively through a lens of managerial

decision-making and resource allocation. This perspec-

tive has characterized the innovation process in large

firms as one in which inventors confine themselves to

idea generation, leaving idea commercialization to

other actors, subject to organizational inertia. We

Received: 13 November 2017 Revised: 13 May 2020 Accepted: 19 May 2020 Published on: 12 August 2020

DOI: 10.1002/smj.3209

2372 © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Strat Mgmt J. 2020;41:2372–2399.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/smj

develop a complementary perspective of the innovation

process in which inventors may navigate organiza-

tional inertia by going beyond idea generation to

attracting resources toward commercializing their

breakthrough inventions. By offering a novel account

of how inventors at Xerox navigated multiple evalua-

tion criteria to commercialize their inventions, the

study sheds light on an important yet overlooked

aspect of the innovation process in large firms that can

facilitate the commercialization of breakthrough

inventions.

KEYWORDS

commercialization, evaluation criteria, innovation process,

inventors, large firms

1|INTRODUCTION

As I review the nature of the creative drive in the inventive scientists that have

been around me, as well as in myself, I find the first event is an urge to make a sig-

nificant intellectual contribution that can be tangibly embodied in a product or

process.

Edwin H. Land, Polaroid founder (quoted in Pace, 1991)

Strategy scholars have long recognized the challenges that large firms face in commercializ-

ing breakthrough inventions that represent new technological trajectories for the firm in exis-

ting or new markets (Ahuja, Lampert, & Tandon, 2008; Hill & Rothaermel, 2003; Wolter &

Veloso, 2008).

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An important line of inquiry within this literature has uncovered different

sources of organizational inertia that hinder the commercialization of such inventions (Che-

sbrough, 2010; Christensen & Bower, 1996; Kapoor & Klueter, 2015; Rosenbloom, 2000; Tripsas

& Gavetti, 2000). In investigating the difficulties of commercializing breakthrough inventions,

scholars have highlighted the prevailing needs of firms' customers (Christensen & Bower, 1996;

Rosenbloom, 2000), the fear of cannibalizing existing businesses (Henderson, 1993), financial

analysts' expectations (Noda & Bower, 1996), senior managers' understanding of the firm's busi-

ness model (Gilbert, 2006; Tripsas & Gavetti, 2000), the use of quantitative frameworks to evalu-

ate investments (Baldwin & Clark, 1994; Christensen, Kaufman, & Shih, 2008), and the

availability of complementary assets that may not be compatible with the focal invention (Wu,

Wan, & Levinthal, 2014).

An important premise within this perspective has been that generating new ideas (inven-

tion) and converting these ideas into commercial products (innovation) are distinct aspects of

the innovation process, involving different actors and processes. This split in focus meant that

scholars studying invention in large firms have focused on the knowledge-based processes

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Once commercialized, breakthrough inventions could yield radical or disruptive innovations (Dahlin & Behrens, 2005).

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