Agile Capabilities for Innovative and Imitating Firms: A Framework for Mobile Handset Industry

Agility is considered as the new paradigm of 21st century firms operating in VUCA environment. The traditional agility literature dwells on generic agile capabilities that a firm needs to develop in order to attain agility. However, firms differ on their market strategies and different strategies may entail different agile capabilities. In other words, a firm's strategy should be aligned with its agile capabilities. There is a lack of research exploring the relationship between a firm's strategy and agile capabilities that best fits that strategy. The paper aims at proposing that strategy of a firm is a critical determinant for the agile capabilities that it needs to develop. A conceptual framework is proposed for identifying the key agile capabilities for two contrasting firm level strategies – Innovation and Imitation. The theory of dynamic capabilities is used as theoretical background. The conceptual framework has been substantiated through two secondary case studies in the mobile handset industry.