EXPLOITING UNCERTAINTY—INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITIES AS REAL OPTIONS: A NEW WAY OF THINKING IN ENGINEERING ECONOMICS

A new trend in corporate planning is to exploit uncertainty by taking investment opportunities as real options. This options approach is to complement the conventional net present value (NPV) criterion in evaluating risky investments. In this paper, we take a broad look at the real options approach to various engineering economic decision problems, laying out how it provides an immediate and important perspective on value creation in an uncertain world. Unlike financial options, real options analysisdeals with investments in real assets, which is one of the primary interest areas in engineering economics. For that reason, we believe that any advancement in the real options decision framework will benefit the field of engineering economics.     

Strategic NPV: Real Options and Strategic Games under Different Information Structures

Research summary : Among the most difficult firm strategic choices is the trade‐off between making a long‐term commitment or holding off on investment in the face of uncertainty. To operationalize strategic management theory under demand, technological and competitive uncertainty, we develop a Strategic Net Present Value (NPV) framework that integrates real options and game theory to quantify value components and interactions at the interface between NPV, real options, and strategic games. Our approach results in new propositions clarifying the way learning‐experience conditions, technological uncertainty, and proprietary information interact to tilt the balance in the interplay between wait‐and‐see flexibility and strategic commitment. As such, Strategic NPV adds to our understanding of the conditions where NPV, real options, or strategic thinking are more relevant. Managerial summary : This study develops and elucidates implementation of a new valuation construct, “Strategic Net Present Value (NPV),” that integrates real options and game theory to more accurately portray strategic decisions underlying management theory. Among the most difficult firm strategic choices in capital intensive industries, such as energy, mining, chip manufacturing, and infrastructure development, is the trade‐off between making a long‐term commitment or holding off on investment in the face of demand, technological, and competitive uncertainties. The study provides new insights on the way various conditions, such as learning‐experience effects, technological uncertainty, and proprietary information, interact to tilt the balance in the interplay between commitment and wait‐and‐see flexibility. As such, Strategic NPV adds to our understanding of when NPV, real options, or strategic thinking matter more critically for decision making. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Business relationship portfolios and subcontractors' capabilities

While research on vertical relationships has demonstrated that suppliers' capabilities can be developed via partnerships, we lack studies that relate the development of such capabilities to the management of business relationship portfolios. This paper partially fills this research gap by investigating how small to medium subcontractors (SMSs) align their customer relationship portfolios with their design and marketing capabilities.Applying one-way ANOVA to a sample of 62 subcontractors located in the mechanical industrial district of Pordenone (North East Italy), we show that the development of marketing and design capabilities affects subcontractors' business relationship portfolios. Our study suggests that SMSs strategically manage their customer relationships, moving from traditional subcontracting to a more articulated portfolio characterized by a stronger presence of partnership and market relationships. Marketing and design capabilities shape SMSs' autonomy and strategic options in choosing the appropriate combinations of different relationship types.     

Expansion planning for transmission network under demand uncertainty: A real options framework

In recent years, there has been much expectation that transmission expansion planning should address ever increasing demands for transmission services under significant and complex economic and regulatory uncertainties. In this article, toward meeting the aforementioned expectation, we develop and analyze a real options framework that provides the valuation of a transmission owner's option to expand in his or her network. What distinguishes our framework from the extant literature is that the evolution of the demand follows a geometric Brownian motion process, it explicitly accounts for the physical flow of the electric power economically manifested as the locational marginal prices, and it shows how the values of the expansion options can be determined in the transmission network. Furthermore, our framework shows how to value an option to expedite or delay can be determined given that a specific expansion is planned. An extensive numerical example is presented to illustrate the key features of our framework.     

The role of corporate image in business-to-business export ventures: A resource-based approach

Although a growing body of studies suggests that good corporate images have strategic value for the firms that possess them, no research to date has looked at the role of corporate image in export markets. To fill this gap in the extant literature, this study draws on the resource-based view and insights from qualitative interviews to develop a model that links an exporter's financial resources and relationship management capabilities with its corporate image advantage and its performance in the export market. Findings reveal that both financial resources and relationship management capabilities are significant contributors of corporate image advantage, which, in turn, is an important determinant of superior export performance. The study concludes with a discussion of the implications of the findings for marketing theory and practice and suggestions for future research.     

Evaluating Product Plans Using Real Options

Product planning helps a company to strategically plan its current and future product platforms and offer product variants in the marketplace. Product platforming is widely touted as a successful strategy for mass customization. However, due diligence should be exercised before implementing any product platform strategy. The product planning exercise should account for future uncertainties. Traditional financial tools such as the net present value (NPV) are static since they do not compensate for any exogenous and endogenous uncertainties during the course of the project. The crux of the problem lies in the evaluation model that is used for evaluating the product planning projects. While many view uncertainties in a product planning project as problematic, it can also be viewed as a source of new opportunities. We argue that uncertainties should be an integral part of the evaluation model. If the future possibilities (or strategic options) are not considered in the evaluation model, a corporation may face a “myopic syndrome”.

In this article, we consider two important product planning decisions—platform decisions and product variant decisions. The platform decision involves strategic selection of a concept product platform from various possible alternative concept product platforms. The product variant decision involves deciding how long a company should continue to offer its current product variant in the marketplace and whether the existing product variant should be discontinued, scaled down, or scaled up with additional product features. To address the two aforementioned decisions, we developed a real options–based methodology that considers technical, project implementation, and market-related uncertainties. The proposed methodology uses a binomial and quadranomial lattice approach to build a decision tree. Product planning decisions at various decision tree nodes are evaluated using a risk-neutral option valuation methodology. We demonstrate the working of the proposed methodology using an illustrative example.     

Innovations and the role of complementarities in a strategic theory of the firm

In the resource‐based view of strategy and in evolutionary economics, complementary assets play a crucial role in explaining sustainable competitive advantages and innovations. Despite the apparent importance of complementary assets for the understanding of corporate strategy, their creation and the associated managerial problems have been much less discussed. We believe this to be a major weakness in the strategic theory of the firm. Interestingly, problems of coordination and cooperation are center stage in the contract‐based theories of the firm, and we try to integrate some of their insights into a resource‐based perspective. Specifically, we show how complementary assets raise the need for strategic direction by a firm's top management. Moreover, complementary assets magnify internal incentive problems, and their management has an impact on the innovativeness of a firm. Lastly, complementary assets play a crucial role in the internal appropriation of innovative rents. We demonstrate the fruitfulness of our integrated framework by relating some of our findings to the literature on corporate strategy, industry evolution, and organizational structures. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Shareholder Value, Real Options, and Innovation in Technology-Intensive Companies

We show how central concepts from technology and innovation management (TIM), sequential models of the New Product Development (NPD) process, and the valuation technique of 'real options' can be linked, to provide a valuation framework that can be used in the value-based management of technology-intensive companies.
We introduce a binomial option tree which incorporates the flexibility and the risks inherent in the NPD process into its evaluation in a theoretically correct way and is at the same time simple and easy to use. In this way, our options-based approach ties the valuation of hitech and life sciences companies closer to the underlying growth opportunities and incorporates much of the 'gut feel' of experienced industry practitioners into the valuation. As a consequence, the approach leads to more defensible valuations and allows powerful insights for the value-based management of technology-intensive companies.
In two numerical examples we demonstrate that the theoretically more sound option tree approach in practice can produce different valuations and lead to different decisions than a simple 'discounted cash flow (DCF) tree' approach and has therefore potential to improve managerial decision making. Finally, we describe a real life situation where our options-based approach was successfully applied in the valuation for the initial public offering of a biotech company.     

A framework linking intangible resources and capabiliites to sustainable competitive advantage

This article is concerned with the role of intangible resources in business strategy. In particular it is concerned with identifying the intangible sources of sustainable competitive advantage. Sustainable competitive advantage results from the possession of relevant capability differentials. Regulatory and positional capabilities are concerned with intangible assets; functional and cultural capabilities are concerned with competencies. A framework linking intangible resources to capabilities has been devised and is used as the basis of a new technique for identifying the relative contribution which the different intangible resources make to competitive advantage. The results of the use of this technique in six case studies are reported.     

External Venturing and Discontinuous Strategic Renewal: An Options Perspective

This study examines the relationship between a firm's venturing activities and its undertaking of strategic renewal. The study was motivated by some important gaps in the corporate entrepreneurship literature on venturing and renewal. The extant literature has not focused on the different types and dimensions of firms' renewal activities. In particular, discontinuous renewal involving shifts in firms' core businesses is not well understood. Moreover, the conditions that drive firms to undertake strategic renewal have not been examined. For example, it is not known how venturing increases or reduces the benefits of undertaking renewal. This study focuses on a discontinuous form of renewal involving major changes in firms' core businesses and examines firms' external venturing activities that complement their internal development. We examine corporate venture capital (CVC) investments, which are direct minority equity investments made by established companies in privately held ventures. Discontinuous renewal is conceptualized as resulting from a set of related, and often sequential, managerial decisions. The first managerial decision is to initiate growth in a business that is relatively newer or smaller for the organization. The second decision is to move away, or even withdraw completely, from the current core business that enabled prior growth and prosperity for the firm and served as its primary revenue earner. Employing a real options perspective, we argue that CVC investments create growth options in new and existing businesses but do not result in firms' withdrawal from existing businesses. Therefore, we expect CVC activity to be negatively associated with the likelihood of a firm undertaking discontinuous renewal. We also propose that the benefits of withdrawing from existing businesses are even lower, and the costs even higher, for firms in dynamic industries and for firms that possess strong internal capabilities. The predictions of the study are tested using longitudinal data on 477 firms from the 1990 Fortune 500 list for the period 1990–2000. We find support for all our predicted hypotheses. These results help address important limitations in the corporate entrepreneurship literature. The study also contributes to the real options and organizational capabilities literatures.     

Paying attention to real options

The strategy literature is increasingly focused on the need to create dynamic capabilities to respond with innovative product offerings in 'hypercompetitive' environments. The real options approach offers hope for managers facing such threatening environments by highlighting methods to hold options on a variety of possible future states, thereby reducing risk without bearing all the costs. However, extant real options literature, stemming from rational-based financial assumptions, does not consider attention as a limited resource. Real options are valued on the assumption that management can exploit the flexibility inherent in projects, and so require management attention to obtain their full theoretical value. This paper brings attentional constraints to bear on the real options framework and describes a conceptual framework that illustrates the real option value realization process.     

Why history matters: Micro-and macro-foundations in a corporate de alio spinoff

Much of the discussion surrounding dynamic capabilities has focused on mature and established corporate enterprises escaping core rigidities. Less understood is the role of dynamic capabilities in corporate spinoffs that represent a category of de alio (“from others”). These firms offer a novel context when investigating dynamic capabilities, as they are technically “new” firms yet demonstrate a level of establishment due to privileged access to resources from a corporate parent. We explore how incubation and attachment to a parent influences tacit and explicit transfer of resources and supports sensing and seizing in the early growth corporate de alio spinoff, promoting opportunities for transformation as the spinoff matures. Through an analysis of a longitudinal, empirical, illustrative case, we integrate Garnsey's Penrosean-inspired Theory of the Early Growth of the Firm with Teece's dynamic capabilities framework to illustrate how micro- and macro-foundations of dynamic capabilities unfold in a corporate de alio spinoff during incubation and following spinoff. This study builds an understanding of how corporate de alio spinoffs can more successfully navigate ambiguity by leveraging dynamic capabilities, the foundations of which emerge in a parent entity.     

Optimal Valuation of Noisy Real Assets

We study the optimal valuation of real assets when true asset values are unobservable. In our model, the observed value cointegrates with the unobserved true asset value to cause serial correlation in the time series of observed values. Autocorrelation as well as total variance in the observed value are used to calculate an efficient unbiased estimate of the true asset value (the time–filtered value). The optimal value estimate is shown to have three time–weighted terms: a deterministic forward value, a comparison of observed values with previously determined time–filtered values, and a convexity correction for incomplete information. The residual variance measures the precision of the value estimate, which can increase or decrease monotonically over time as well as display a linear or nonlinear time trend. We also show how to revise time–filtered estimates based on the arrival of new information. Our results relate to work on illiquid asset markets, including appraisal smoothing, tests of market efficiency, and the valuation of options on real assets.     

Toward a behavioral theory of real options: Noisy signals,bias, and learning

Research Summary: We develop a behavioral theory of real options that relaxes the informational and behavioral assumptions underlying applications of financial options theory to real assets. To do so, we augment real option theory's focus on uncertain future asset values (prospective uncertainty) with feedback learning theory that considers uncertain current asset values (contemporaneous uncertainty). This enables us to incorporate behavioral bias in the feedback learning process underlying the option execution/termination decision. The resulting computational model suggests that firms that inappropriately account for contemporaneous uncertainty and are subject to learning biases may experience substantial downside risk in undertaking real options. Moreover, contrary to the standard option result, greater uncertainty may decrease option value, making commitment to an investment path more effective than remaining flexible. Managerial Summary: Executives recognize the need to make uncertain investments to grow their business while mitigating downside risk. The analogy between financial options and real corporate investments provides an appealing method to consider the practical challenge of such investment decisions. Unfortunately, the “real options” analogy seems to break down in practice. We identify how a second form of uncertainty confounds real options intuition, leading managers to overestimate the value of uncertain investments. We present a behavioral real options model that accounts for both forms of uncertainty and suggest how uncertainty interacts with behavioral bias in the option execution/termination decision. Our model facilitates assessment of the conditions under which investments in uncertain opportunities are usefully considered as real options, and provides a means to evaluate their attractiveness.     

Getting beyond relatedness as a driver of corporate value

Our paper scrutinizes how corporate value derives from redeployability of firms' resources to new product markets. We focus on the underexplored determinant of redeployability, inducements, defined as advantages in returns in new over existing markets. We assemble separate dimensions of inducements from research on corporate diversification and real options and consider inducements in their entirety. A simulation model casts redeployability as a real option to switch the use of resources across markets and explicates important interdependences among the dimensions of inducements. The model also demonstrates that inducements modify the effect of relatedness on corporate value. Our theoretical arguments amend existing theory and have important implications for corporate diversification research. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Portfolio Considerations in the Valuation of Real Estate

When a real asset rises in price faster than inflation (as real estate did in the late 1970s) and rises significantly in price over an extended period (as real estate has done for the last decade and one-half), it concerns valuation and investment professionals who fear about it being over-valued. One of the reasons for such price performance may be an increase in demand due to the portfolio characteristics of the asset during the period of time in question. For real estate this means the proportion included in optimal portfolios should be significant and increasing as individual tax rates increase in an environment of increasing average tax rates.
This study uses six tax brackets (0%, 10%, 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%) and portfolios consisting of three traditional assets (NYSE common stocks, corporate bonds and small stocks) plus three types of real estate (residential, business and farmland) to demonstrate that this is what has transpired in the real estate markets. Optimal portfolio weights are derived for each asset for after-tax portfolios. Real estate in general and residential real estate especially increased as a proportion of the optimal after-tax portfolio as individual tax rates increased. Other studies are used to demonstrate an environment of increasing average tax rates.     

Specificity and opacity as resource-based determinants of capital structure: evidence for Spanish manufacturing firms

In this work we develop an analytical framework to examine the effects of strategic investments on the financial policy of the firm. From the resource-based approach of the firm, nontradable and difficult-to-copy assets are the basis of a sustainable competitive advantage. However, imperfections in the resource markets can also be interpreted as sources of costs and/or restrictions from a financial point of view. Specificity and opacity are the features of strategic resources that enable us to identify the financial implications of the resource-based strategy. We have tested our theoretical framework using a sample of Spanish nonfinancial firms. Our results show that highly specific and opaque resources limit the borrowing capacity of the firm, while other transparent strategic assets affect financial leverage positively. Our findings suggest two main implications for strategy formulation and implementation: (1) there are unobservable financial costs that must be considered for a correct evaluation of a sustainable competitive advantage based on strategic resources; and (2) the financial policy of a ‘resource-driven’ firm is partially determined by the features of its strategic resource bundle. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

CEO career horizon,corporate governance,and real options: The role of economic short‐termism

Research Summary: Combining studies on real options theory and economic short‐termism, we propose that, depending on CEOs’ career horizons, CEOs have heterogeneous interests in strategic flexibility, and thus, have different incentives to make real options investments. We argue that compared to CEOs with longer career horizons, CEOs with shorter career horizons will be less inclined to make real options investments because they may not fully reap the rewards during their tenure. In addition, we argue that long‐term incentives and institutional ownership will mitigate the relationship between CEOs’ career horizons and real options investments. U.S. public firms as an empirical setting produced consistent evidence for our predictions. Our study is the first to theoretically explain and empirically show that a CEO's self‐seeking behavior will impact real options investments. Managerial Summary: This article helps to explain how a CEO's self seeking‐behavior may shape a firm's real option investment, which could result in different level of strategic flexibility. We argue that CEOs with short career horizons have less time to exercise their firms’ real options, which should lower the investments in the firms’ real options portfolios relative to CEOs with long career horizons. We study a sample of U.S. public firms and find strong evidence that a CEO's expected tenure in the firm is positively related to the real options investments at the firm level. We find that this agency issue can be mitigated by adopting appropriate corporate governance mechanisms such as long‐term incentives and institutional investors.     

Optimal Valuation of Claims on Noisy Real Assets: Theory and an Application

A theory for valuing claims on noisy real assets is developed and applied. Central to the theory is determination of the dynamics for the best estimate of real asset value. The dynamics of the value estimate are shown to differ from the dynamics of the true asset value only in the arrival rate of information. The rate of information arrival in the value estimate can be faster or slower than information arrival in the true asset value, which can lead to unexpected outcomes in the valuation and exercise of options on noisy real assets. The theory we develop is illustrated through an application. An imperfectly competitive market for real estate development is examined, in which agents compete over the timing of lead investment. Information spillover and free–rider incentives are shown to cause significant delay in lead investment. Delay together with a competitive response once lead investment has occurred explain observed patterns of development in gentrified urban land markets and multistage development projects.     

A REAL OPTIONS DESIGN FOR PRODUCT OUTSOURCING

Product outsourcing is recognized as a way to gain flexibility for competitive advantage. We formulate the outsourcing problem using real options. We develop a financial model to assess the option value of product outsourcing. Specifically, we consider a three state-variable problem and use Monte Carlo simulation to estimate the value of the option. This valuation gives decision makers a way to choose the appropriate outsourcing strategy based on an integrated view of the market dynamics. A case example from the apparel manufacturing industry is used to demonstrate the application of real options to value outsourcing flexibility. We show that the inability of classical net present value methods to address dynamics in the market condition leads to an undervaluing of the outsourcing strategy. Numerical results and sensitivity analysis show how the real options approach can be used to give a better view of the long-term value of outsourcing.