UC Berkeley

Pisano's recent ICC article offers some clarity around the pursuit and development of new capabilities, but it overreaches by equating this with dynamic capabilities as a whole. The capabilities that he discusses are, for the most part, simply technologies that can be thought of as "ordinary capabilities". Moreover, his approach isolates capability selection from strategy. Opportunities must be sensed and calibrated and a strategy developed before capability gaps can be identified. Pisano also treats general-purpose capabilities as an option without acknowledging their dependence on the stage of the industry lifecycle. In mature industries, general-purpose technologies are less likely to be relevant. While there is much of value in Pisano's article about technology selection and risk, this is overshadowed by the claims he makes for the magnitude of the article's contribution to dynamic capabilities research.