Exaptation is one of the most important and, yet, little studied evolutionary mechanisms in the history of species, ecosystems, and artifacts (e.g., technologies). Many, if not most, of all biological traits and human artifacts that were developed for particular functions started as something...

Strategy research typically traces stable performance differences among firms to a priori heterogeneity in initial resource endowments or in expected flows of resources. The objective of this paper is to explore how this heterogeneity is created and how it affects firm technological performance....

We suggest that a systematic socio-cognitive approach to “competitive sensemaking”has been absent from theory and research on competitive strategy. We define competitivesensemaking as the social and cognitive processes that underlie how firms detect, define, andconceptualize their...