Firm Innovativeness From The Complex Adaptive Systems Theory Perspective: A Conceptual Framework

Abstract

Fierce competition and fast-growing technology in today’s chaotic market environment, which result in fluctuating customer demands and expectations and shortening product and technology life cycles, force organizations to establish mechanisms providing them with the ability to adapt to the environment in which they operate. Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS), which explain the necessary conditions under which complex and dynamic behavior will occur in organizations organizations to develop their adaptive capabilities in general, and innovation and new product development capabilities in particular. Based on this, our conceptual paper aims to provide an insight into the organizational capabilities for sustainable innovation and new product development from the perspective of CAS theory. With this aim, we explain the mechanisms of CAS which are relevant with the new product development efforts in organizations, but rarely have been empirically proved to leverage adaptive capabilities of organizations by previous research in the innovation and new product development literature.