New product introductions below aspirations,slack and R&D alliances: A behavioral perspective

We develop hypotheses based on behavioral theory that explain how high technology firms' new product introduction (NPI) performance below aspiration levels impact the number of R&D alliances, and how slack moderates this relationship. Using panel data of U.S. biopharmaceutical firms, we find that as firms' NPI performance below historical aspiration levels increases the number of R&D alliances they form increases and slack intensifies this relationship. We contribute to alliance research by providing theory and empirical evidence that increases in the distance of NPI below aspirations serve as a motivation for increases in R&D alliances, and empirically to behavioral theory by revealing that NPI goals act similarly to financial performance goals in their impact on firms' actions and slack intensifies this relationship. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

企业R＆D商业化能力研究

知识经济的飞速发展凸显出技术创新的重要性，企业R＆D商业化能力作为企业技术创新能力的重要组成部分越来越被人们所重视。本文认为，企业R＆D商业化能力的强弱在很大程度上影响着R＆D投入的收益多少．企业可以从多个层次来改善其R＆D商业化的水平．不同的商业化途径对R＆D的盈利水平亦有着显著影响。企业应该重视其R＆D商业化能力的改善．因为．它为企业在技术创新活动中实现真正意义上的自主提供了必要的资源支持．是企业实现自主创新战略的必然选择。     

A sensemaking perspective on coopetition

This study approaches coopetition as a strategic change and aims to bridge the gaps in micro level cognition and strategy by exploring how a coopetitive frame is constructed, as well as how individual level differences in this creation can be explained. The empirical case study findings contribute to existing coopetitive research by showing that individuals differ in their ability to create future accounts of engagement in strategic activities, as well as in modifying established frameworks of competition to fit an emerging coopetitive frame. Based on the case study findings, a model of sensemaking is presented, which indicates the influence of attitudes and expectations over time on the development of a coopetitive frame. Managers that were unable to update their expectations from the past accordingly struggled in their sensemaking, whereas the interpretative process was aided by optimism and high expectations of the future. A key contribution of the empirical study lies in the focus on sensemaking differences that sheds light on the complexities inherent in coopetitive strategizing.     

A bargaining perspective on resource advantage

Whereas prices serve to allocate many resources in market economies, there remain vast reservoirs of unpriced resources to be managed. Business management and strategy concerns the creation, evaluation, manipulation, administration, and deployment of unpriced specialized scarce resource combinations. This paper applies the formalism of cooperative game theory to these concerns. In cooperative game theory, rents appear as the negotiated payments for the services of scarce valuable resources. The division of surplus is determined by the relative values created by different use combinations of resources. Within this framework, the strategy problem is clearly seen as one of discovering or estimating the value of various resource combinations. New wealth can be created by trade in resources as long as there are hitherto unexamined combinations. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A sensemaking perspective on network pictures

This paper examines the concept of network pictures through the lens of the organizational sensemaking perspective. Essentially it develops the concept of network pictures by suggesting we think of them as exercises in sensemaking. It does so by providing an introduction to organizational sensemaking before establishing a degree of commensurability between network pictures and sensemaking. It suggests that what we may then see more clearly is that the concept of network pictures needlessly gets involved in reification when talking of ‘the’ network picture whereas a more dynamic approach leads to ideas of network picturing in which the complete discrediting or collapse of extant sensemaking and network pictures provides a research opportunity that could be jointly explored by both perspectives. The paper concludes that paradoxically ‘finding’ this new sense or new network picture appropriate to radically changed times is facilitated by a process that involves first ‘becoming lost’.     

Capabilities for advanced services: A multi-actor perspective

Servitization involves manufacturers developing service offerings to grow revenue and profit. Advanced services, in particular, can facilitate a more service-focused organization and impact customers' business processes significantly. However, approaches to servitization are often discussed solely from the manufacturer's perspective; overlooking the role of other network actors. Adopting a multi-actor perspective, this study investigates manufacturer, intermediary and customer perspectives to identify complementary and competing capabilities within a manufacturer's downstream network, required for advanced services. Interviews were conducted with 24 senior executives in 19 UK-based manufacturers, intermediaries and customers across multiple sectors. The study identified six key business activities, within which advanced services capabilities were grouped. The unique and critical capabilities for advanced services for each actor were identified as follows: manufacturers; the need to balance product and service innovation, developing customer-focused through-life service methodologies and having distinct, yet synergistic product and service cultures; intermediaries, the coordination and integration of third party products/services; customers, co-creating innovation and having processes supporting service outsourcing. The study is unique in highlighting the distinct roles of different actors in the provision of advanced services and shows that they can only be developed and delivered by the combination of complex interconnected capabilities found within a network.     

Dynamic Time-Staged Model for R&D Portfolio Planning—A Real World Case

Abstract— A dynamic, time-staged mixed integer model is currently being used for the selection of industrial long-range R&D portfolio. Input data from research and marketing are processed through logical programs to provide the discounted payoffs, probabilities (Bayesian, parallel strategies), subjective nonmonetary multiple criteria weights, and the matrix for the mathematical programming model. The multiperiod portfolio is revised sequentially for resources exhaustion throughout the planning horizon by the staged introduction of additional projects. Marginal payoff function (additional investments vs. expected payoff) is a by-product for the support of additional resources justification. Mathematical and heuristic techniques used to overcome common difficulties confronted by previously discussed models are presented. Experience with model introduction to management is also discussed.     

新药R＆D创新现状及原因探究

在新药研发费用投入日趋攀升的情况下,医药企业在利益诱导下,放弃进行根本意义上的创新,将其研发导向“渐增式创新”药物,从而在医药行业界的新药研发上出现“创新制口”的危机。本文分析出现这一现象的原因有三个方面的因素,包括来自政府方面、企业方面以及市需求方面。     

A comparison of the constant-order and dual-index policy for dual sourcing

We analyze a single-product, periodic-review, stochastic demand inventory model with backorders and two supply options, a regular and a more expensive expedited one, with deterministic, offsetting lead times. Since the optimal policy for such a problem is generally unknown, several simpler policies have been proposed in the literature, e.g., the single-index (SIP), dual-index (DIP), or constant-order policy (COP). In previous research the DIP has been found to perform closely to the optimal policy in specific numerical settings. The COP, on the other hand, is very appealing from a practical point of view. We explore the relative cost performance of these two policies in a numerical study to gain insights into appropriate policy choices. We find that in settings, where dual sourcing is most valuable, the simpler COP delivers satisfactory results, sometimes even better ones than the DIP, and therefore represents a legitimate policy alternative for practical situations.     

A service science perspective on business model innovation

Using four basic principles of service science, we systematically explore value-proposition design as one type of business model innovation. Service science combines organization and human understanding with business and technological understanding to categorize and explain service systems, including how they interact and evolve to cocreate value. Our goal is to apply a scientific approach to advance design and innovation in service systems. Our foundation is service-dominant logic, which provides perspective, vocabulary, and assumptions on which to build a theory. Our basic theoretical construct is the service system, entities that are dynamic configurations of four kinds of resources. Our core principles center on the way value is computed within and among entities, how interaction is based on access to resources and their capabilities, and on how value computation and interaction depend on symbol processing and language guided by mutually agreed-to value propositions. In this context, service science can inform and accelerate value-proposition design by systematizing the search for adaptive advantages that improve existing offerings, create new offerings, or reconfigure the value-creating ecosystem.     

A buyer's perspective on collaborative versus transactional relationships

This research examines collaborative and transactional relationships in buying firms to determine whether collaborative relationships offer greater benefits than transactional relationships, and to ascertain which relational factors drive satisfaction and performance for both collaborative and transactional relationship types. Factor analysis, t-tests and step-wise regression were used to analyze data from a survey of buying firms. Results show that collaborative relationships offer higher levels of satisfaction and performance than transactional relationships. Satisfaction factored into two separate constructs: satisfaction with the relationship and satisfaction with the results. Of the relational factors examined, trust is the most important predictor of performance and satisfaction with the relationship regardless of the type of relationship examined.     

A capabilities perspective on membership management in franchise networks

This study explores the membership management process in a franchise network. Via an in-depth case study of a German tire retail franchising network, we develop a four-stage process model of membership management in such a network, and find that the different membership management stages of selection, integration, stewardship and evaluation are based on a variety of underlying routines, such as bonding, embracing and assessing. We conceptualize the synergistic interplay of these routines as the franchise network's membership management capability, explaining how the franchisor effectively manages its diverse set of members over time. Our findings bridge research on franchising, and organizational as well as inter-organizational management capabilities, to contribute towards a more holistic understanding of how franchise networks, as collectives of organizations, are maintained and managed.     

A bargaining perspective on strategic outsourcing and supply competition

This article considers the outsourcing choice of a downstream firm with its own upstream production resources or assets. The novelty of the approach is to consider the outsourced function as involving resources consistent with the resource‐based view of the firm. From a bargaining perspective, we characterize a downstream firm's decision whether to outsource to an independent or to an established upstream firm. In so doing, the downstream firm faces a trade‐off between lower input costs afforded by independent competition, and higher resource value associated with those who can consolidate upstream capabilities. We show that this trade‐off is resolved in favor of outsourcing to an established firm. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Process model of strategic business exit: Implications for an evolutionary perspective on strategy

The process model of strategic business exit (SBE) maps the activities of different levels of management onto the business and corporate levels of strategy making involved in Intel Corporation's exit from its core dynamic random access memory (DRAM) business. The SBE process model contributes to the development of an evolutionary process theory of strategy making by conceptualizing the pattern of managerial activities through which resources and corporate competencies are internally redirected toward more viable business opportunities, and the strategic context of a core business dissolves. The SBE process model corroborates the usefulness of the Bower-Burgelman process model for conceptualizing strategy making in complex organizations.     

A novel CAI system for space conceptualization training in perspective sketching

For many designers, freehand sketching is the primary tool for conceptualization in the early stage of the design process. However, current education on concept presentation techniques rarely emphasizes the construction of the most fundamental spatial unit, the cube. Incorrect construction of spatial units leads to disproportions that deviate from the common visual experience, and consequently slows down the design process. In addition, weak spatial cognition can be a problem when transferring sketches into orthographic drawings. To address these issues, this research focuses on the training of cube sketching techniques using both freehand skills and digital devices. Based on the station-point approach for two-point perspective drawings, this study developed a computer-assisted instruction (CAI) platform for beginners, with which users can practice freehand sketching for self-improvement. This platform provides instant corrective feedback to every freehand-sketched cube, thus promoting better learning outcome and more effective use of educational resources. Similar platforms have not yet been found in the field. The proposed system’s feasibility and practicality were evaluated through a series of teaching experiments. The results indicated that the proposed CAI system can improve students’ sketching accuracy by 19% after 6 weeks of instruction, and that the proposed system was found to be more effective than traditional pen-and-pencil instructions in advancing sketching techniques.     

A perspective on planning and crises in the public sector

Five diagrams indicate how crises open up five different kinds of ‘opportunity space’. Expanded opportunity spaces involve, in effect, a relaxation of the ‘normal’ constraints around decision-making in governmental systems. This perspective may allow for better prediction of crises, better choices during crises, and greater stability in solutions to crises.     

Network position and identity: A language-based perspective on strategizing

This article explores processes of strategizing within business networks by showing how managers employ sensemaking to cope with network paradoxes. It takes the linguistic turn to analyze how participants discursively construct their organizations' identities and positions within a ‘designed’ network context. In doing so, the paper attempts to answer the research question posed so provocatively over a decade ago by Håkansson and Ford (2002): by exploring how companies interact in business networks. Our contribution is to show how firms interact by taking a language-based perspective on strategy to help understand the links between network, organizational and micro-levels of social construction. An in-depth discussion of a case study is presented, with particular emphasis on the identity-constructing processes affecting (and affected by) the positioning and strategizing of various network actors. We conclude by reflecting on the theoretical and practical contributions of our analysis, the latter focusing on tensions in Indigenous business development.     

A demand‐based perspective on sustainable competitive advantage

We develop an approach to analyzing the sustainability of competitive advantage that emphasizes demand‐side factors. We extend the added‐value approach to business strategy by introducing an explicit treatment of how firms create value for consumers. This allows us to characterize how consumer heterogeneity and marginal utility from performance improvements on the demand side interact with resource heterogeneity and improving technologies on the supply side. Using this approach, we address a variety of questions including whether technology substitutions will be permanent or transitory; the sequence in which new technologies attack different market segments; how rents from different types of resources change over time; whether decreasing marginal utility and imitation give rise to similar rent profiles; the extent of synergies within a firm's resource portfolio; the emergence of new generic strategies; and the conditions that support strategic diversity in a market. Our focus on consumer utility and value creation complements the traditional focus in the strategy literature on competition and value capture. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Zip-mentation : (A selective mailing strategy using zip code segmentation for industrial mailings to professionals)

The basic thrust of this paper deals with the mechanics of implementing a management information system to obtain marketing feedback for management decision making. It organizes the specific variables involved and welds them into a meaningful model plan which allows the marketing manager or his assistants to intelligently determine the results of their efforts on regular and experimental mailings. This model hopefully obviates the possibility of confusing cause and effect which seems to be one of the most common errors that occurs in direct response today.