The Strategic Management of Trade Secrets in Technology-based Firms

The importance of trade secrets to the effective strategic management of technology-based firms can make the difference between economic success and failure for significant new product lines, or even the firm itself. This article proposes the conceptual outlines of a framework addressing the strategic management of trade secrets. The author identifies three environments that strongly influence strategy formulation (legal and market) and strategy implementation (organizational). A conceptual framework for trade secret strategy formulation is developed, offering a logical approach to reaching a managerial choice of trade secrecy over other forms of intellectual property protection. Discussion of trade secret strategy implementation invokes an emphasis on managerial control structures and mechanisms, focusing on the use of the trade secret audit, the identification of components of an implementation strategy (e.g., employee education, controlling physical and electronic access, and monitoring competitors), and an ever vigilant defense of trade secret protection pursued in the courts.     

论商业秘密的民法保护

民法保护是商业秘密法律保护的重要组成部分,对于保护商业秘密权利人的合法权益,维护正常的市场竞争环境,建立和谐的市场竞争秩序,具有十分重要的作用。在民法保护中,应当准确界定商业秘密的权利归属,合理划分侵权诉讼的举证责任,明确商业秘密被侵权时可采取的法律保护形式,依法判定侵权人应当承担的民事法律责任。     

Competing on Competence: A Knowledge Perspective on the Management of Strategic Innovation

The resource-based strategy paradigm emphasizes the importance of firm-specific assets and knowledge, variously referred to as core competencies and distinctive capabilities. This perspective on sources of competitive advantage is complemented by knowledge and learning perspectives on strategic innovation. We explore conceptual links between knowledge development and the management of strategic innovation. We argue that the management of strategic innovation is the purposeful orchestration of organizational knowledge development and application and we highlight a variety of managerial dilemmas associated with this view.     

Competing on Competence: A Knowledge Perspective on the Management of Strategic Innovation

The resource-based strategy paradigm emphasizes the importance of firm-specific assets and knowledge, variously referred to as core competencies and distinctive capabilities. This perspective on sources of competitive advantage is complemented by knowledge and learning perspectives on strategic innovation. We explore conceptual links between knowledge development and the management of strategic innovation. We argue that the management of strategic innovation is the purposeful orchestration of organizational knowledge development and application and we highlight a variety of managerial dilemmas associated with this view.     

商业秘密经济学及其在中国的应用

商业秘密作为企业和个人的一项特殊的财产权利，对其给予充分的法律保护符合效率原则。中国当前对商业秘密的法律保护有待加强，应该引入惩罚性赔偿制度，合理规定商业秘密的保护期限，在商业秘密侵权诉讼中采取举证责任倒置，从而实现效率目标，促进合作与安全，增进社会公共利益。     

A Theory of Trade Secrets in Firms*

This article provides a simple theoretical model of trade secrets in hierarchical firms. A crucial assumption is that each manager has access to trade secrets pertaining to his own hierarchical level as well as to all lower levels. The article explores some implications of this assumption for optimal degree of trade secrets accumulation and protection as well as for the wage structure in firms. In addition, the model implies that managers may have an incentive to overpay their subordinates and protect their firms’ trade secrets too much.     

Interactive planning for strategy development in academic-based cooperative research enterprises

The evolution of strategic management concludes that formulation and implementation is an emergent process. In today's knowledge-based society this requires that managers develop more creative ways to align strategies with core competencies to maximise organisational performance and efficiencies. This paper evaluates the approach taken by a university-based research collaborative to illustrate an integrated planning process that supports strategic management in higher education environments. Utilising the concepts of road mapping and interactive planning, this case study provides insights into the participative approach used and provides a modification of several conceptual models to illustrate the advantages and disadvantages of this process.     

浅谈财务信息公开与商业秘密的保护

揭示了企业信息公开的必要性与企业商业秘密保护的重要性。财务信息的公开与商业秘密的保护表面上看是矛盾的,但如能正确处理好这两者之间的关系,就能促使企业实现规范化管理,促进企业健康有序的发展。     

战略视角决策框架研究:基于竞争战略和蓝海战略的整合分析

战略视角决策是战略制定和战略实施的隐含前提。战略视角包括以竞争战略为代表的结构主义战略视角和以蓝海战略为代表的重构主义战略视角。从挖掘理论本质出发,对比分析了两种战略视角的内涵和特点,采用理论演绎方法,揭示了两种战略视角整合情况下的产业内企业数量与行业平均利润间的长期关系、短期关系以及调整过程,基于演绎分析归纳了影响战略视角决策的3个关键因素,并提出了战略视角决策框架,为企业做出正确的战略视角决策提供了一定的理论支持。     

竞业禁止规范与商业秘密保护研究

在现代高新技术快速发展的知识经济时代,商业秘密作为国家科学技术进步的体现和企业经济活动发展的基石越来越受到重视,商业秘密的保护也成为我国司法保护的新热点。竞业禁止是保护商业秘密的重要手段。然而,我国有关竞业禁止的法律法规还没有形成一个完整的体系,比较灵散,不宜操作,不利于竞业禁止的规范。作者试图对我国商业秘密保护中竞业禁止的规范作一初步探讨。     

科技项目立项中的商业秘密保护研究

论述了有关单位在申请或审批应用科技项目活动中的商业秘密保护问题，并针对应用科技项目活动中的具体情况，提出了相应的商业秘密保护对策。     

关于地市级寿险公司发展战略的研究

本文旨在从战略管理的理论与实务操作两个层面,结合实地调研,对目前部分地市级寿险公司在发展战略的认识、制定、实施三个层面存在的问题与不足进行深入思考,并尝试提出“两个加强、一个创新”的初步设想,以期促进地市级寿险公司树立对发展战略的正确认识,提高制定、实施发展规划的能力,激发发展动力,从而实现公司业务发展的新突破。     

Strategic planning, strategic management, strategic foresight: The seminal work of H. Igor Ansoff

H. Igor Ansoff was the prominent reference in the corporate strategy field, especially during the 1960s and 1970s. His bestseller, Corporate Strategy, was the first to give a conceptual framework and a tool box to top managers, consultants and scholars. Recognized as the real pioneer of the field, he was seen by Henry Mintzberg as also the leader of the strategic planning school. The aim of this short article is to show that he was also the father of strategic management and a leader who gave an impressive set of concepts and ideas to promote an integrative and flexible view of strategic planning, strategic foresight, organizational structures and processes.     

Strategic framework for commercialisation of fly ash innovations

Numerous innovative applications have been developed to utilise large quantity of fly ash generated at coal fired thermal power plants (TPPs) worldwide. However, this requires power plants to undertake the role of third-party innovation intermediaries, that is, commercialising technological innovations developed by others. As commercialising an innovation requires considerable resources, a well-considered selection and promotion are desired. The paper presents a strategic framework for commercialisation of fly ash innovations. Explanation for step-by-step implementation and generic pointers for strategy formulation for typical problems are suggested. The proposed framework is expected to assist coal-fired TPPs in formulating strategies to commercialise innovative utilisation of fly ash. The study contributes to scarcely addressed aspects of an open innovation paradigm, that is, challenges faced by third-party intermediaries.     

Constructing and mobilising futures knowledge in an organisation: foresight as a catalyst of dynamic strategic practice

The paper discusses foresight as a dynamic strategic practice and theorises the connections of foresight and strategic management. The paper argues that organisations have a rising need to foster relevant future-oriented knowledge in a continuous process that builds on the systemic understanding of the operational environment. For this purpose, the paper outlines a conceptual framework for continuous organisational foresight practice. The framework is based on two conceptual bedrocks. The first is the idea of continuity, referring to the long-term accumulation of organisational practices. The second bedrock is the notion of discontinuity as an organisational transformation factor. Furthermore, the framework builds on the notion of four knowledge spaces in an organisation, and it is constructed through six layers depicted in detail. The paper demonstrates this framework through a case study of a Finnish research and technology organisation, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland.     

Environmental uncertainty,foresight and strategic decision making: An integrated study

This paper explores how the foresight practices and techniques that might be used for coping with environmental uncertainty are coordinated throughout large corporations and how their results are used for supporting strategic decision making. Based on an in-depth and multiple study of several companies, we analyse the main characteristics of environmental uncertainty - complexity and dynamism - that shape companies’ approaches to strategic foresight and uncertainty management. We explore the impact of growing complexity and dynamism on these approaches and the role of prediction and control in their design and implementation. We outline a conceptual framework for strategic foresight activities - and their relationships with decision making under uncertainty - as a planned learning process about the future which enables managers not to know opportunities and threats in advance, but to detect them more promptly and to react more effectively as soon as they start emerging.     

Foresight in corporate organisations

Strategy formulation is strictly intertwined with the analysis of the likely evolution of the business environment, in order to detect promptly the opportunities and the threats brought about by emerging trends and to deal with them properly (strategic foresight). Today many companies put much effort into strategic foresight, and also in the literature on strategy there is a growing attention to strategic foresight. However, it still seems there is a lack of a general framework of analysis that clearly defines how all the foresight activities should be carried out in a firm and should be integrated in an organic way, in order to support strategic decision makers at corporate, business and functional levels. This is the main issue we have taken into account through the study of some relevant European and US firms that have established foresight units, in order to deliver support for long term strategy formulation.     

Optimal corporate strategy under uncertainty

Within a dynamic setting, optimal corporate strategy management for a multi-division corporation involves restructuring a portfolio of Strategic Business Units (SBUs) periodically so as to maximize the firm's market value. Real option theory has been applied to model and explain managerial flexibility for both project selection and operational decisions. In general, optimal corporate strategy has focused on strategic environments and characteristics of business units rather than on managerial flexibility. In this article, we develop a feasible discrete-time model for optimal corporate strategy that incorporates both endogenous and exogenous factors and is consistent with the value-based criterion for maximizing shareholders’ wealth.     

Overcoming free riding in multi-party computations—The anonymous case

This paper addresses the question of multi-party computation in a model with asymmetric information. Each agent has a private value (secret), but in contrast to standard models, the agent incurs a cost when retrieving the secret. There is a social choice function the agents would like to compute and implement. All agents would like to perform a joint computation, which input is their vector of secrets. However, agents would like to free-ride on others' contribution.A mechanism which elicits players' secrets and performs the desired computation defines a game. A mechanism is ‘appropriate’ if it (weakly) implements the social choice function for all secret vectors. namely, if there exists an equilibrium in which it is able to elicit (sufficiently many) agents' secrets and perform the computation, for all possible secret vectors. We show that ‘appropriate’ mechanisms approach agents sequentially and that they have low communication complexity.     

地方经济增长目标管理——一个三元框架的理论构建与实证检验

本文基于政府结构理论对中国地方政府的经济增长目标制定模式进行了理论讨论和实证分析。理论上，本文完整地提出了地方政府实施经济增长目标调整的三元框架，涵盖了时间维度自我纵向调整、空间维度横向竞争以及层级维度对上反应。实证上，本文采用2001—2013年31个省区的实际经济增长和经济增长目标数据，运用空间计量回归模型发现，地方经济增长目标对本地实际经济增长走势做出显著的正向反应，对其他地区的经济增长目标也做出显著的正向策略性反应，而对全国性的实际经济增长走势做出策略性的逆向反应。同时，地方经济增长目标调整呈现出多维度异质性，具体表现在沿海和内陆区域差异、金融危机前后阶段差异以及党代会年份周期差异。总体来看，地方经济增长目标制定呈现激进性、波动性和互动性。本文的发现意味着，中央应当注重对地方政府的经济增长业绩考核的激励相容，以提升中国宏观经济管理和地方经济可持续增长的稳定性。