Perpetual Adoption Overlap (PAO): A Conceptual Framework for Technological Assimilation and Change Management under Accelerated Innovation

Successive technological innovations may reach organizations before earlier generations have completed assimilation and delivered their intended benefits. Existing research recognizes nonlinear adoption, innovation overload, continuous change, and absorptive capacity; overlap alone is therefore not assumed to be a new discovery. This paper proposes Perpetual Adoption Overlap (PAO) as a timing-based, testable construct: the recurrent arrival of materially relevant successor technologies while earlier adoption-to-value cycles remain unfinished. It introduces an exploratory Absorption Pressure Ratio (APR = OAT/TRT) to compare organizational assimilation time with the renewal interval, and considers the temporal resilience of supplier technologies as a potential product-quality dimension. A continuous governance response is outlined for both adopters and technology developers. The proposed constructs and measures require empirical validation.