PRIN Project – The Role of Dynamic Capabilities in Fast Changing Environments: Upshots on Innovation Strategies and Organizational Processes

(Research project of relevant national interest funded by the Italian Ministry of University and Education in 2008 – Coordinator: University of Catania; Partner Units: Bocconi University of Milan, the University of Cagliari and Polytechnic of Milan)

The research project endeavors to pave the way to a deeper understanding of the characteristics of dynamic capabilities. In short, it aims:

1. to explain the processes through which dynamic capabilities allow firms to cope with fast changing environments by studying the nature and the sourcecs of firm capabilites;
2. to examine the evolution of dynamic capabilites in fast changing environments; and
3. to operationalize the concept of dynamic capabilites.

The study is interdisciplinary, involving scholars both in economics and in technology, so as to harmoniously merges qualitative and quantitative competences. The logic of this investigation draws from evolutionary arguments.

The basic hypothesis of the research project is that a hierarchy of capabilities organized on three levels (i.e., zero level, first level and second level) facilitates, on the one side, the accomplishment of organizational tasks and, on the other side, the conception and introduction of innovations, at higher levels (such as the development of a completely new product technology), as well as at lower levels (such as a program for improving the quality of some of the organizational processes).