The Need for Organisational Resilience - Chapter 2

• the transformation or reuse of existing assets which have depreciated (Teece

2007; Teece, Pisano, and Shuen 1997).

Ultimately, competitiveness is established by the organisation’s adaptiveness as it

constantly addresses environmental adaptive pressures and builds up adaptive challenges

for key competitors.

Towards Organisational Resilience: The Fallacy of Determinism

A fallacious argument may be additionally deceptive in appearing better than it really is; and

this can also happen when adopting a Linear Strategy in business. A Linear Strategy

appears to be more straightforward; strategic planning is ‘easier’, more efficient, at least in

the short term. A fixed strategic plan can provide a ‘clear’, well-defined road map to achieve

a specific long-term goal, and can thus be broken down into its components in order to drive

the more detailed planning of people, structure and procedures within an organisation.

Nevertheless, the Achilles heel of a Linear Strategy is uncertainty in the form of

incomplete knowledge about the future state of an environment and its impact on the

organisation. What if the predicted future makes the fixed, well-defined long-term goal

redundant? Let’s use the example of Kodak. In January 2012, Kodak, an American

technology company that concentrated on imaging products and had invented the hand-held

camera, filed for bankruptcy. What was once considered a hub of technological wizardry

suddenly became an institution with little hope of surviving much longer into the future.

The demise of Kodak, like nothing else, highlights the ongoing need for top-level

managers to cope with the effects of uncertainty. The use of photographic film was

pioneered by George Eastman, who started manufacturing paper film in 1885 before

switching to celluloid in 1889. His first camera, which he called the ‘Kodak’, was first offered

for sale in 1888. It was a very simple box camera with a fixed-focus lens and single shutter

speed which, along with its relatively low price appealed to the average consumer. The first

camera using digital electronics to capture and store images was developed by 1975. The

adoption of digital cameras was slow. In 1999, with the rise of broadband technology to

share digital images, the demand for digital stand-alone cameras suddenly exploded, fuelled

by the introduction of the iPhone in 2007. The volatility in the environment, amplified by the

rise of the smart phone, caught Kodak off guard, partially because of its lack of

understanding of market volatility.

Uncertainty is associated with a lack of predictability about how the environment will

unfold, and the lack of awareness and understanding of developments, issues and events:

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