| Course | BUS 6513 Innovation Theory and Organizational Practice |
|---|---|
| Module | Module 2 |
| Paper type | Innovation case analysis |
| Length | 1,260 words, about 5 pages plus title and reference pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | American College of Education |
| Program | Doctor of Business Administration |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for BUS 6513 Module 2
Polaroid Built the Sensor and Missed the Market: How Managerial Beliefs Stalled a Capable Firm's Digital Imaging Effort
Student Name
American College of Education
BUS6513: Innovation Theory and Organizational Practice
Module 2 Assignment
Instructor Name
January 29, 2029
Introduction
Polaroid is often remembered as a company that ignored digital photography. The scholarly record shows something more instructive. Polaroid invested heavily in digital imaging from the early 1980s, developed advanced sensor technology and produced digital products, yet it never built a profitable digital business and filed for bankruptcy in October 2001. This paper analyzes that innovation effort. Using the integrated lens developed in the first module, it asks whether Polaroid lacked the knowledge to recognize the opportunity, whether its resource allocation starved the effort, whether its leaders held exploration and exploitation together and whether its products fit how customers would use them.
Sources and Approach
The analysis relies mainly on Tripsas and Gavetti (2000), who studied Polaroid through company archives and interviews with managers, supplemented by research on core rigidities and on Kodak's parallel experience. Using a published scholarly case rather than press accounts has an advantage and a cost. The advantage is evidence gathered systematically by researchers with access to internal documents. The cost is that the analysis inherits those researchers' framing, so rival explanations are considered explicitly before conclusions are drawn.
The Innovation Effort
Polaroid's business rested on instant photography: cameras sold at modest margins and proprietary instant film sold at high margins. In the early 1980s, senior managers recognized that electronic imaging could threaten this business and began investing in it. Tripsas and Gavetti (2000) report that by the end of that decade a substantial share of the company's research budget went to digital imaging and that Polaroid had developed a high-resolution sensor that was among the best available. Through the 1990s the company introduced digital products, including a professional digital camera and film scanners, and later consumer models. Yet these products did not become a significant business, and the company's fortunes continued to depend on instant film until its collapse.
Lens Question One: Absorptive Capacity
The first question is whether Polaroid could recognize and absorb the new knowledge. The evidence suggests it could. Cohen and Levinthal (1990) argued that prior related knowledge drives a firm's ability to value and use outside discoveries, and Polaroid had deep expertise in optics, imaging chemistry and, increasingly, electronics. Its researchers did not merely track digital imaging; they advanced it. On this dimension, Polaroid looks like a firm well placed to lead, which is exactly why the case is useful: it rules out the simplest explanation for failure and directs attention to managerial and organizational factors.
Lens Question Two: Beliefs and Resource Allocation
Tripsas and Gavetti (2000) concluded that Polaroid's senior managers held two beliefs rooted in the instant film business: that profits come from consumables rather than hardware, the razor and blade model, and that customers want physical prints. These beliefs shaped which digital projects received support. Projects that combined digital capture with printed output fit the beliefs and were favored, while a stand-alone digital camera, which offered no recurring consumable revenue, struggled to win resources. This is a cognitive version of the mechanism Christensen and Bower (1996) described: allocation processes steer investment toward what fits the existing business, even when that business is about to change.
Core Capabilities Becoming Core Rigidities
Leonard-Barton (1992) observed that the knowledge, systems, skills and values that make a firm successful can become rigidities when a new project requires different ones. Polaroid's strengths in chemistry, film manufacturing and a high-margin consumables model were exactly what digital imaging made less relevant. Digital cameras competed on rapid product cycles, low-cost electronics manufacturing and retail channels in which Polaroid had little advantage. The company's sensor capability was real, but turning it into a competitive consumer business required capabilities in fast-moving consumer electronics that Polaroid's systems and values did not support. The capability gap was organizational rather than technical.
Lens Question Three: Ambidexterity
Polaroid did create separate groups for electronic imaging, which resembles the structural separation ambidexterity research recommends. However, Tripsas and Gavetti (2000) describe senior managers applying the parent's business model to judge the new unit's proposals. Structural separation without a different strategic logic at the top meant the new unit was evaluated by the beliefs it needed to escape. O'Reilly and Tushman (2013) emphasized that ambidexterity depends on senior leaders who can hold contradictory logics and integrate the units, not merely on organizational boxes. Polaroid separated the units but did not separate the logic used to fund them.
Lens Question Four: Fit With Users
Polaroid's products also fit poorly with how customers came to use digital images. Early digital photographers valued immediate viewing, easy storage and later, sharing on computers and networks. Polaroid's emphasis on prints addressed a need customers were moving away from. In diffusion terms, the company's products were compatible with Polaroid's view of photography rather than with users' emerging practices, which limited their relative advantage in the eyes of buyers.
Rival Explanations
Two rival explanations deserve consideration. The first is that digital imaging was simply a poor business for any camera maker, given falling prices and competition from electronics firms. This has some force, since few traditional photography firms prospered, but it does not explain why Polaroid could not use its early lead in sensors. The second is financial constraint: by the late 1990s, Polaroid carried heavy debt, which limited investment. This is real but late; the key choices about which digital projects to fund were made earlier, when the company had resources. The beliefs explanation accounts for more of the pattern than either rival.
A Comparison With Kodak
Kodak's experience supports the analysis. Lucas and Goh (2009) found that Kodak, whose engineer built an early digital camera in the 1970s, also struggled because its culture, middle management and film-based business model slowed change, even as senior leaders announced digital strategies. In both firms, technical capability arrived early, and the barriers lay in beliefs, incentives and organizational habits tied to a profitable consumables business. The comparison strengthens the conclusion that capability and commitment at the top were not sufficient.
Lessons for Leaders
Three lessons follow. First, leaders should make their business model assumptions explicit and test them against the new technology's economics, since unexamined beliefs can steer allocation more powerfully than formal strategy. Second, separating a new venture is insufficient if its proposals are judged by the parent's criteria; the new unit needs its own performance logic and a senior sponsor who defends it. Third, firms should study how users actually adopt a new technology rather than projecting existing behavior onto it. These lessons will inform the systems analysis in the next module.
Limitations
This analysis depends heavily on a single scholarly study, and hindsight makes managerial beliefs look more obviously mistaken than they appeared at the time. In the late 1980s, the economics of consumer digital photography were uncertain, and the razor and blade logic had served Polaroid well for decades. A fair conclusion is that the beliefs were reasonable in their time but were not revisited as evidence accumulated, which is a failure of learning rather than of foresight.
Conclusion
Polaroid's digital imaging effort stalled not because the company lacked knowledge or investment but because managerial beliefs grounded in instant film shaped what was funded, core capabilities became rigidities, structural separation was undermined by the parent's logic and products fit the firm's view of photography better than customers' practices. Rival explanations account for less of the pattern. The case confirms the value of the integrated lens: a firm can pass the test of absorptive capacity and still fail on allocation, ambidexterity and fit with users.
References
Christensen, C. M., & Bower, J. L. (1996). Customer power, strategic investment, and the failure of leading firms. Strategic Management Journal, 17(3), 197-218. https://doi.org/10.1002/(sici)1097-0266(199603)17:3<197::aid-smj804>3.0.co;2-u
Cohen, W. M., & Levinthal, D. A. (1990). Absorptive capacity: A new perspective on learning and innovation. Administrative Science Quarterly, 35(1), 128-152. https://doi.org/10.2307/2393553
Leonard-Barton, D. (1992). Core capabilities and core rigidities: A paradox in managing new product development. Strategic Management Journal, 13(S1), 111-125. https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.4250131009
Lucas, H. C., Jr., & Goh, J. M. (2009). Disruptive technology: How Kodak missed the digital photography revolution. The Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 18(1), 46-55. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsis.2009.01.002
O'Reilly, C. A., III, & Tushman, M. L. (2013). Organizational ambidexterity: Past, present, and future. Academy of Management Perspectives, 27(4), 324-338. https://doi.org/10.5465/amp.2013.0025
Tripsas, M., & Gavetti, G. (2000). Capabilities, cognition, and inertia: Evidence from digital imaging. Strategic Management Journal, 21(10-11), 1147-1161. https://doi.org/10.1002/1097-0266(200010/11)21:10/11<1147::AID-SMJ128>3.0.CO;2-R
BUS 6513 Module 2 instructions, in plain terms
The second BUS 6513 paper often asks you to analyze a real innovation effort and the barriers it met. Expect to choose a case with solid documentation, ideally scholarly studies or detailed company records rather than press coverage alone, and to apply theory systematically rather than retell the story. Most prompts reward explaining why the effort advanced or stalled through named mechanisms, testing rival explanations and drawing lessons that apply beyond the case. Acknowledge the limits of your sources and of hindsight. Doctoral papers should cite peer-reviewed research in APA 7 and show how the case confirms, extends or challenges theory, not merely illustrates it. A short timeline of the case, placed early, helps readers follow the analysis that comes after it.
How the BUS 6513 Module 2 example is put together
The sample begins with a common misconception about Polaroid and replaces it with the scholarly record. It explains its sources and their limits, describes the innovation effort and then applies four lens questions in turn: absorptive capacity was strong, beliefs steered resource allocation, structural separation was undermined by the parent's logic and products fit the firm's view of photography rather than users' habits. A section on core rigidities adds Leonard-Barton's mechanism. Two rival explanations are tested, Kodak provides a comparison and three lessons for leaders close the analysis, followed by a limitations section that addresses the danger of hindsight in judging past decisions. Each lens question is answered with case evidence before the next is raised.
Where the points sit in the BUS 6513 Module 2 rubric
Innovation case analyses are graded on depth of theory application, quality of evidence and judgment. Instructors look for a well-documented case, systematic use of theory to explain outcomes, consideration of rival explanations and lessons that generalize. Strong papers rely on scholarly sources, connect case facts to specific mechanisms and acknowledge limitations such as hindsight bias. Papers that narrate a familiar story, apply theory as labels or ignore alternative explanations usually earn less. Sources need complete APA 7 entries with DOIs. A comparison case can strengthen conclusions, and a clear statement of what the case adds to theory shows doctoral-level thinking. Graders frequently reward papers that separate what the sources show from the writer's interpretation.
BUS 6513 Module 2 help from the desk
Choosing a case with enough scholarly evidence is often the first challenge. We can help you find a documented innovation effort, gather the research on it and apply theory step by step, including rival explanations and limitations. Send the module instructions and any case you are considering, and we will prepare an analysis built on peer-reviewed sources rather than press stories. Technology, health care, manufacturing and public sector cases all fit this assignment. Expect the analysis in roughly three days, along with a table linking case evidence to each mechanism. If you would rather analyze your own organization, we can help structure that version as well. Cases from your own industry can make the lessons more useful to you.
Write yours, or have the desk draft it
This paper is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official American College of Education document. Read it for the moves, then write your own to the instructions in your classroom. If you want one built to your exact prompt and rubric, the first custom sample is free and arrives in 24 to 48 hours.
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BUS 6513 Module 2 questions, answered
What does BUS6513 Module 2 usually ask for?
In BUS6513's second module, students commonly examine one documented innovation effort, why it advanced or stalled and what barriers it met, using theory.
Why did Polaroid fail at digital photography?
Research by Tripsas and Gavetti found the company had strong technology but managers' beliefs in a film-based business model and physical prints shaped what was funded.
What are core rigidities?
Leonard-Barton's term for strengths, such as skills, systems and values, that hold a firm back when a new project requires different ones.
Where can I find a free BUS 6513 Module 2 sample paper?
This page has one: a doctoral analysis of Polaroid's digital imaging effort using absorptive capacity, resource allocation, ambidexterity and diffusion.
Can I use a famous case like Kodak or Polaroid?
Yes, if you rely on scholarly sources, apply theory carefully and test rival explanations rather than retelling a familiar story.