From Schreyögg, 2007, 923: Innovation routines are higher-order search routines to bring about regular modifications of established lower-order"" routines. Such routines, somewhat similar to the Japanese system of continuous improvement, are expected to produce revisions, even radical changes, in a systematic and predictable fashion (Nelson and Winter, 1982: 17). This approach also includes the explanation of the genesis of routines. Both operating and innovation routines (`dynamic capabilities') arise from learning and are conceived as condensed results of former trial-and-error behavior in terms of collective learning acts. Zollo and Winter therefore suggest establishing separate 'learning mechanisms' to develop a firm's routines. These learning mechanisms are specified as stages in a recursive cycle of 'experience accumulation,' `knowledge articulation,' and 'knowledge codification' -- a specification which comes close to Non- aka' s knowledge spiral (Nonaka, 1994).