As the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the globe in the first quarter of 2020, demand for specialised equipment in hospitals soared. As a result, firms from a variety of sectors repurposed their design and manufacturing to create new products in days. By examining 80 cases of this accelerated innovation, the research investigates how a shared purpose drives change in the innovation process. It applies the lens of exaptation – the discovery of unintended functions for technologies – to explain how product complexity and ecosystem structure affect accelerated innovation in this context. The research extends the application of exaption to manufacturing as well as product design; it identifies a relationship between complexity, exaptation and ecosystems. The research suggests that the ability to exapt design and manufacturing can determine a firm’s ecosystem role. These results lead to implications for theory and for practice, during the response to and recovery from the crisis.

中文翻译：

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通过重新利用加速创新：响应 COVID-19 的设计和制造扩展

随着 2020 年第一季度 COVID-19 大流行在全球蔓延，医院对专业设备的需求猛增。结果，来自各个行业的公司重新调整了其设计和制造的用途，以在几天内创造出新产品。通过检查这种加速创新的 80 个案例，该研究调查了共同目标如何推动创新过程中的变化。它运用了探索的视角——发现技术的非预期功能——来解释产品复杂性和生态系统结构如何在这种情况下影响加速创新。该研究将 exaption 的应用扩展到制造和产品设计；它确定了复杂性、扩展性和生态系统之间的关系。研究表明，设计和制造的能力可以决定公司的生态系统角色。在应对危机和从危机中恢复期间，这些结果对理论和实践产生了影响。