▪ Abstract Three ideas—a complex division of labor, an organic structure, and a high-risk strategy—provoke consistent findings relative to organizational innovation. Of these three ideas, the complexity of the division of labor is most important because it taps the organizational learning, problem-solving, and creativity capacities of the organization. The importance of a complex division of labor has been underappreciated because of the various ways in which it has been measured, which in turn reflect the macroinstitutional arrangements of the educational system within a society. These ideas can be extended to the study of interorganizational relationships and the theories of organizational change. Integrating these theories would provide a general organizational theory of evolution within the context of knowledge societies.