IS YOUR FIRM A CREATIVE DESTROYER - COMPETITIVE LEARNING AND KNOWLEDGE FLOWS IN THE TECHNOLOGICAL STRATEGIES OF FIRMS

A firm's technology strategy can be described either as a war of position or a war of movement. The first kind of strategy leads the firm to hoard its technological assets in an attempt to defy the equilibrating action of market forces (neoclassical or N-learning), the second pushes for a selective diffusion of its technological assets that will move it beyond market equilibrium and towards new opportunities (Schumpeterian or S-learning). Using Boisot's (1986) culture space as an analytical tool the paper explores the difference between N- and S-learning and how they each affect a firm's technological prospects.