Path dependency in unplanned R&D

This paper confirms the importance of path dependency in the accumulation of firm-specific technological competencies. It shows that firms are guided by the selective logic of path dependency in their innovation process, even if it is not management taking the decision to invest in a new business idea. The research focused on the output of bootlegging, which is defined as research in which motivated corporate entrepreneurs pursue innovative activity, which they themselves define and secretly organise. Bootlegging emerges as an incremental continuous trail-and-error learning process in R&D. Total anarchic chaos and the violation of strategic direction settings as feared by some managers is not going to happen.