Fitting Innovations into Existing Categories: A Review of Vinokurova’s SMJ ArticleThe first OHN Reading Club - detailed and thoughtful reviews of key articles
Hello everyone! This is the first of our monthly reading clubs, where I review an article in the field and unpack what makes it interesting for those of us curious about historical approaches in management. We start with a piece that came out last summer:
How mortgage-backed securities became bonds—and what that tells us about category evolutionNatalya Vinokurova’s recent article in the Strategic Management Journal, “Fitting Innovations into Existing Categories: Evidence from Mortgage-Backed Securities,” is a self-consciously historical piece of research that deserves attention from those of us interested in how archival methods can generate theoretical insights for strategy scholarship. The empirical setting is the acceptance of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) as bonds in the United States between 1970 and 1995. This is not ancient history by any means—it feels quite contemporary—but the process is now complete, which makes it amenable to the kind of retrospective analysis that historical research excels at. And of course, given the role MBS played in the 2008 Financial Crisis, it is a case with considerable real-world significance. The theoretical puzzleThe opening follows the standard template you see in top journals. Natalya starts with a theoretical puzzle around innovation: much research has focused on how new categories are established, but less attention has been paid to how innovators fit new products into existing categories. This is typically assumed to be straightforward. But is it? How do you effectively secure category membership, and what strategies are employed? These turn out to be genuinely interesting questions. From this theoretical puzzle, she moves to the empirical case that illustrates it: how did mortgage-backed securities come to be accepted as bonds? The whole introduction is remarkably efficient—barely a page—with each paragraph doing precisely what it needs to do. The archival approachThe data collection is detailed but also revealing about contemporary archival practice. Most of the research took place online, through databases that many researchers would be familiar with—ProQuest, ABI/INFORM, WorldCat—supplemented by privately held documents obtained through personal interactions. Natalya provides a clear table of archival sources: trade press, academic research, popular press, industry trade manuals, legal statutes and rulings. Below, for subscribers, further reflections on how she proceeded to position a careful historical source analysis for a management audience not familiar with archival research... Continue reading this post for free in the Substack app
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Friday, 9 January 2026
Fitting Innovations into Existing Categories: A Review of Vinokurova’s SMJ Article
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Dear Reader, To read this week's post, click here: https://teachingtenets.wordpress.com/2025/07/02/aphorism-24-take-care-of-your-teach...
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