Excerpt from Windows of Opportunity: Creating Occasions for Technological Adaptation in Organizations New technologies are almost never perfect upon initial introduction. As Sahal (198227) stated, once introduced, new technologies are af icted by a wide variety of teething problems. Deployment of a given technology within a specific context of application reveals numerous opportunities for improvement that were not apparent before introduction, but that are needed to meet users' needs, objectives, or changing circumstances (rosenberg, 1982; Dutton and Thomas, The modifications that follow can affect the technology, its physical context, or even users' basic assumptions and patterns of use (leonard-barton, Unfortunately, however, we know little about the dynamics that underlie the modification of technologies-in-use. The objective of this paper is to provide an empirically grounded and theoretically informed conceptualization of how technologies change once introduced into specific user environments. Our research examined two questions. (i) What is the pattern of technological adaptation in organizations do users' modifications describe a continuous and gradual accumulation of minor improvements, or is adaptive effort and attention applied only intermittently, in a discontinuous fashion? Similarly, do organizations continue to adapt new technologies until most problems are addressed, or do adaptive efforts cease before that point? (ii) To the extent that general patterns of technological adaptation are observed, what organizational forces can be found to explain them? These questions are central to understanding the process of technological change and to appreciating how organizations change through their use of new technologies. Users' modification of existing technologies is critical for several reasons. First, users' discovery of and adaptation to problems in operation is an important force for shaping technological evolution and guiding r&d activity (von Hippel, 1982; Dutton and Thomas, Second, within the user context, modification of existing technologies and procedures for using them is a major determinant of operating efficiency and effectiveness (enos, 1958; Hollander, 1965; Dutton and Thomas. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."