How High‐Tech Firms Achieve Organizational Resilience Using Dynamic Capabilities and Different Types of Innovations in VUCA Environments

ABSTRACT High‐tech firms must achieve organizational resilience (OR) to remain viable in volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) environments. Although specific dynamic capabilities (DCs), particularly integrative and reconfiguring capabilities, allow such firms to integrate and complement resource/capability gaps and align resources to maintain evolutionary fitness and develop different types of innovations to become resilient, how they leverage both to achieve OR in VUCA environments remains unexplored to date. This study uses a multiple‐case study approach to explore how high‐tech firms achieve OR by leveraging integrative and reconfiguring capabilities and different types of innovations in VUCA environments. This study finds that high‐tech firms focus on market dynamics, adaptive management innovations, and efficiency‐driven management and process innovations to become resilient. They develop these innovations using proactive and time‐oriented, support activities‐focused, and technology‐driven reconfiguring capabilities, respectively. Additionally, they use ambidexterity‐focused integrative capability to develop supply chain adaptive product innovations and extended technology leveraging market innovations to become resilient. The deployment of complementarity‐oriented integrative capability is found useful in building existing technology leveraging market innovations that underlie firm resilience. This study contributes to the innovation management literature by offering a granular, comprehensive strategic understanding that incorporates both foundations (DCs) and key drivers (innovations) to achieve OR in VUCA environments. It provides managers with nuanced insights for use in developing overarching R&D and innovation strategies by effectively allocating and renewing resources using feature‐specific integrative and reconfiguring capabilities to develop diversified, distinctive types of innovations that provide firms with resilience to support operational continuity in VUCA environments.