Organizations engage in search when they innovate. Search is typically performed by multiple group members who are knowledgeable about parts of the search problem, but rarely understand all decision variables. Search theory has shown that team members therefore need to coordinate their work....

We study the implementation of operations strategy at six German manufacturers in mature businesses. Search theory argues that vertical coordination (i.e., unilateral top-down adjustment of lower-level search actions) balances stability against the improvement potential enabled by frontline...