Continuous and (Dis)Continuous Innovation: Two Balancing Acts?

Today firms are challenged by very strong pressures because of the performance that products should possess to address the needs of today’s and (day-after) tomorrow’s customers. Indeed, today’s customers ask to be satisfied in terms of function, price, time, quantity, service and place of the existing product - this requires excellence in exploitation capabilities – while the (day-after) tomorrow’s customers ask for new configurations of products – this requires excellence in exploration capabilities. If we extend this argument one step further, we can see that the (day-after) tomorrow’s customers require not only new product configurations with higher performance, but also new products with lower performance and easier to use. These pressures originate two balancing acts:  combining excellence in both exploitation and exploration;  being excellent in satisfying the demand of the (day-after) tomorrow’s customers, whatever the performance they ask. At present these two acts need more investigation within an integrated approach. Our objective is to begin to shed light on the necessity to consider these balancing acts in a global perspective and on how companies can combine these two balancing acts. We performed a retrospective case study of Microlambda/Selenia which was successful in achieving and maintaining the combination of these two balancing acts. The importance of this case study resides in the fact that it dates back to its origins in 1951, when in Italy the radar technology and the radar industry began to be developed.