Making Design Rules: A Multi-Domain Perspective

This study analyzes the processes whereby organizations develop radical innovations in response to environmental transformations. It explores the changes in organizational structures, practices and business strategies entailed by the implementation of such innovations. From the literature on modularity, we borrow the idea that the evolutionary dynamics of artifacts and organizations are linked by design rules, i.e. a set of principles that allocate functions to components, identify the operating principle of each component and determine the interfaces among modules. Through an in-depth case study of radical innovation in tire manufacturing, we study the joint dynamics of technical and organizational change during the transition from old to new design rules. We argue that technical change and organization adaptation are linked, but that such relationship is mediated and rendered open-ended by the evolution of the underlying bodies of knowledge.