Foundational Thinking About Innovation

William J Abernathy, a professor at the Harvard Business School when he died in 1984, was a pioneering figure in the study of how the innovation process unfolds. In 1980, he co-wrote the influential article - "Managing Our Way to Economic Decline" - which contended that the principal causes of America's industrial production ills were poor corporate management and technological sluggishness. Over the course of a distinguished career, he was among the first to explore many of the key issues in technological innovation, and his work - one of the most frequently cited in the field - inspired a generation of management scientists. Abernathy's work is foundational, and the reappearance of this wide variety of his papers is a treasure trove for a new generation of scholars of innovation in business schools throughout the world. Some of his early papers represent breakthroughs in thinking about innovation that spurred many of the ideas central to the study of the topic today. The more recent papers explore dynamic issues regarding the management of innovation.