Destabilised market conditions in the telecoms sector are threatening the competitive advantage of many large organisations. In order to respond to this threat, regenerating breakthrough innovation has become critical for many large firms. Reporting on the findings of a case study carried out in “Alpha Corp.” – a global European telecoms firm - this paper explores the strategy used by the firm as it sought to reconfigure its organisational capabilities to regenerate innovation. Subsequently, routines that were reconfigured and integrated to create capability at the invention phase of the firm’s innovation process are identified and defined
from a resource-based perspective. Additionally, this analysis reveals that a number of entrepreneurial and working culture initiatives took place. The development of a model, illustrating the dynamic routines the firm assimilated into a proven capability for architectural innovation, is then discussed. Furthermore, following an exploration of the resource-based view of the firm and the theoretical streams of innovation and entrepreneurship, this model is deconstructed and a number of key factors are synthesised onto a conceptual framework. This framework tentatively embodies the rudiments of a contingent integrated capabilities theory for regenerating architectural innovation in large enterprises.

Keywords: Innovation strategy, architectural innovation, resource-based view, dynamic capabilities, corporate entrepreneurship