A Cognitive Theory of the Firm

Very tough text to read. Nooteboom's ideas are interesting and applicable to the modern organization, but they are not presented in a way that is easily-digestible. This text is rated three stars because of the quality of the material, certainly not the writing or organization.

Having to read this for an organizational dynamics course, my initial impression was that the book would not be useful and barely applicable to real organizations. As it progressed, however, Nooteboom's notion of dynamic capabilities (to build off of Teece's and others' earlier work) proved interesting. It was the introduction of cognitive distance, though, and further the notion of optimal cognitive distance that I really found useful (and was the ‘saving grace' for the book, in my opinion). Broadening an organization's capabilities through strategic alliances so as to stretch cognitive distance (the range of concepts, actions, capabilities, etc. an organization can effectively cover) was particularly poignant for me as a small business owner.