Cognition and Renewal: Comparing CEO and Organizational Effects on Incumbent Adaptation to Technical Change

We investigate the conditions under which managerial cognition affects the timing of incumbent entry into a radical new technological market. We address this question using a longitudinal study of communications technology firms entering the fiber-optics product market. Using a hazard rate model, we investigate the relevance of cognition based on the direction of CEO attention. We find that attention toward the emerging technology and the affected industry is associated with faster entry, and attention to existing technologies is associated with slower progress. Second, we assess the extent to which the effect of cognition is dependent upon the levels of relevant organizational factors and find that CEO…