Organizing for Sustained Innovation: the Role of Knowledge Flows within and between Organizational Communities

The capacity to innovate impacts organizational performance and is crucial for competitive advantage. However, as structural inertia sets in, large organizations tend to lose their ability to sustain continuous knowledge creation dynamics. Moreover, created knowledge is not always efficiently integrated into new marketable product offerings. As a consequence, organizations continually experiment with designs allowing them to combine both imperatives. Drawing on a longitudinal case study of a large firm operating in the highly competitive Specialty Chemicals industry, we explore how this organization has been able to conjugate the apparently contradictory processes of knowledge creation and integration. Our findings suggest that this capacity is enhanced by effective knowledge flows within and between the different organizational communities.