At the Museum of Natural History in New York, a series of panels graphically depicts natural selection at work. In one panel, a fox runs after a rabbit. In another, a tiger is poised to kill a fox. And so on.

To survive, each animal must rely on the competitive advantages stemming from its own unique abilities. Nothing else matters. Ultimately, outcomes are inevitable and determined. There is no choice in such a world. All that animals have to rely on is what they do best. Pursued by a fox, it makes a lot of sense that a rabbit should run as fast as possible. In the circumstances, it is the best thing to do. Looking at the panel, though, it is not clear that running will be enough to save the rabbit.

The inevitability of outcomes in such a naturally selected world strikes home as one gazes at a magnificent display of dinosaurs. Despite their size, and indeed because of it, dinosaurs became extinct when the earth's atmospheric temperatures soared when either a volcanic eruption occurred or a meteorite hit the earth. Helpless to adapt, dinosaurs became extinct as a species, to be replaced by others better suited to survive the changed ambient conditions.

Subsumed in the natural selection process depicted in these panels are the four challenges to a theory of technological innovation that we articulated (Garud, Nayyar, and Shapira, chapter 1, this volume). These challenges stem from the inevitability of the occurrence of technological oversights and foresights. Oversights and foresights are inevitable because technological outcomes are uncertain and contingent upon a match between the internal capabilities of a firm and its external environments.