Heribert Meffert, Andreas Pinkwart, Ralf Reichwald

• Organizational management theory chases after practice. The theory remains rather static, and in practice managers constantly have to adapt their companies under permanent change. Joseph Schumpeter considered the “pioneers” as those companies that accelerate change and the “latecomers” as those that fight to keep pace. Schumpeter answered the question of who the pioneers are and what latecomers do for survival in permanent situations of change, calling it a process of “creative destruction”: companies develop new products in their research departments displacing old products from the market.