The Myopia of Learning.¶
Levinthal, D. A., & March, J. G. (1993). The Myopia of Learning. Strategic Management Journal, 14, 95-112.
Cited by¶
2 citations across 2 artifacts.
Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.
Primes¶
- Cognitive Flexibility
- In organizational strategy it underlies ambidexterity, the explore-exploit trade-off, and the ability to abandon a dominant logic when the competitive landscape changes — with competence traps as the perseveration failure.
This sourceAnalyzes the explore-exploit trade-off and the competence trap as the perseveration failure of organizational learning.
Supported in partVerified against the publisher's abstract
The abstract states the explore-exploit balance as a learning problem, supporting that clause of the claim; it does not state 'competence traps', 'perseveration failure', 'ambidexterity', 'dominant logic', or any colonization result.
“learning has to cope with confusing experience and the complicated problem of balancing the competing goals of developing new knowledge (i.e., exploring) and exploiting current competencies in the face of dynamic tendencies to emphasize one or the other”
- In organizational strategy it underlies ambidexterity, the explore-exploit trade-off, and the ability to abandon a dominant logic when the competitive landscape changes — with competence traps as the perseveration failure.
- Variation Strategies
- This distinction reframes many stuck problems: not "our team is too homogeneous" but "we are not systematically exploring alternatives"; not "we got unlucky with evolution" but "we are not maintaining sufficient mutation rate or recombination," a reframing Levinthal and March (1993) capture as the myopia of organizations that confuse standing diversity with active search.
This sourceDistinguishes passive heterogeneity from active search, showing how organizations with apparent diversity nonetheless fail to learn when they lack mechanisms for systematic exploration.
Supported in partVerified against the publisher's abstract
The abstract supports the paper's 'learning myopia' frame and the exploration-versus-exploitation tension, but says nothing about organizations confusing standing diversity with active search.
“We examine the ways organizations approach these problems through simplification and specialization and how those approaches contribute to three forms of learning myopia, the tendency to overlook distant times, distant places, and failures, and we identify some ways in which organizations sustain exploration in the face of a tendency to overinvest in exploitation.”
- This distinction reframes many stuck problems: not "our team is too homogeneous" but "we are not systematically exploring alternatives"; not "we got unlucky with evolution" but "we are not maintaining sufficient mutation rate or recombination," a reframing Levinthal and March (1993) capture as the myopia of organizations that confuse standing diversity with active search.
Verification¶
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