Innovations organisationnelles et radicales. Le cas de deux grandes firmes de l'informatique émergente

Whereas the large firms seem to have some disadvantages in developing radical innovations, the aim of this paper is to show that those disadvantages can be overcome if these innovations are accompanied by organisational innovations. We will illustrate this thesis by the case of the passage of mechanical data processing to electronic computers? industry inside two large American firms, IBM and Remington Rand, after the Second World War. Indeed the failure of Remington Rand and conversely the success of IBM in computers?industry can be analyzed through their different organisational strategies in their research centres, in formation but also in the organisation of this emerging product marketing.