Virtuality and uncertainty in the domain of discontinuous innovation

Established firms engaging in the discontinuous innovation process often establish virtual enterprises as a mechanism for coping with uncertainty. The virtual enterprise is assembled from a set of disparate and dispersed technical, human and financial resources, some internal and some external, to achieve one or more milestones, then reconfigured as some of the original resources are shed and new resources are acquired to achieve the next set of milestones, and so on. The paper explores the role of virtuality and uncertainty in the pursuit of opportunity associated with discontinuous innovation.