The Nature of Radical Inventions

Abstract

Inventions come in many different forms ranging from incremental technical change to radical inventions. Radical inventions are very important for industry competition as well as for individual firm survival. In spite of many theoretical discussions on the effect of radical inventions the specific nature of radical inventions has so far remained relatively unclear. We try to shed some light on the nature of these radical inventions by investigating a group of radical, as well as a group of non-radical inventions. We find that recombination is very important for radical inventions. They are also to a large extend based on emergent technologies, and make use of mature as well as emergent technologies. Radical inventions also make more use of knowledge form different knowledge domains.