Authors with many theoretical and managerial perspectives argue that businesses commercializing technologically complex goods benefit when they collaborate closely with other businesses. Collaboration is viewed as a means for businesses to overcome competency limitations and to achieve the close configuration of components required for complex goods. We predict that collaborative relationships ofen assist businesses to produce complex goods, but that the relationships might also cause problems for the collaborating businesses. We find that firms using development-oriented and marketing-oriented collaborative relationships in the hospital sofhvare systems industry are less likely to shut down than businesses that follow independent approaches when the environment changes gradually, but businesses using collaborative relationships are sometimes susceptible to being acquired by other firms. Following a sudden environmental shock, businesses with collaborative relationships for activities central to the shock became more likely to shut down, while businesses with collaborative relationships for activities outside the focus of the shock became more likely to survive. The study critically evaluates and tests the widely stated but little-tested argument that interfirm collaboration is usually beneficial. The results address the issue of whether organizational choices affect comparative business performance. This paper investigates the survival of businesses that use collaborative relationships with other firms to commercialize complex goods. A growing literature has identified many benefits of interfirm collaboration. Several recent studies argue that businesses that collaborate closely with other organizations in order to develop and market complex goods will be more successful than businesses that operate independently (Jorde and

Discussions of technological change have offered sharply contrasting perspectives of technological change as gradual or incremental and the image of technological change as being rapid, even discontinuous. These alternative perspectives are bridged using the punctuated equilibrium framework of evolutionary biology. Using this framework, it is argued that the critical event is not a transformation of the technology, but speciation—the application of existing technology to a new domain of application. As a result of the distinct selection criteria and the degree of resource abundance in the new domain, a new technological form may emerge. The new technological form may be able to penetrate other niches and, in particular, may precipitate a process of 'creative destruction ' and out-compete prior technologies. This framework is applied to an historical study of wireless communication from the early experimental efforts of Hertz to the modern development of wireless telephony. 1.

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Entry order analysis often shows that early eritrrints to an itidustry or technical subfield of an industr?, outperform laggards. Some studiess, though, hme found thrit late entrrints prervil. This paper tests did-clock hypotheses of entry order effects on perfortilance, riieasitred both as market share and survival. One entry clock records the entry of all entrctrits to a new technical subfield within (in industry, while a second clock records the entry of ’ industry incumbents. Relative to the cippropriate clock. early entrmit.s are predicted to oritperforin Irtggards, but when entry is inemired on only one clock, the estiriiuterl influences riiny be inaccurate. Error will be particularly likely if a study contriitis {t surr,ivor bias. The study. which finds entry timing tmde-ofjy between rmirket share and survird, is gerierrilizirble to cmes in which N plriisible set of conditions is found. As an industry evolves, industry incumbents and newcomers must decide whether to manufacture products within new technical areas early, to wait until other firms have tested the new goods and the markets for them (Nelson and Winter, 1982; MacMillan, 1985), or never to introduce them. Early entry has risks-a firm may invest in idiosyncratic assets that turn out to be valueless because the new products do not work or no one wants to buy them. (Williamson, 1975, 1988; Aaker and Day, 1986), or late entrants may incorporate early research at lower cost (Mansfield, Schwartz, and Wagner, 1981). But if a firm waits for technical and market uncertainties to subside, it may be frozen out of a profitable market by participants that took the risk of early entry (Lieberman and Montgomery, 1988). So is it better to be early or late, or never to enter at all? The relative advantages and disadvantages of early entry will vary across industries and among types of firms within an industry. This paper investigates entry timing effects on market share and survival performance in an industry in which a firm’s specialized assets in one product

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A frequent characterization of open source software is the somewhat outdated, mythical one of a collective of supremely talented software hackers freely volunteering their services to produce uniformly high-quality software. I contend that the open source software phenomenon has metamorphosed into a more mainstream and commercially viable form, which I label as OSS 2.0. I illustrate this transformation using a framework of process and product factors, and discuss the shift in the application of the bazaar metaphor from the development process to the product delivery and support process. Overall the OSS 2.0 phenomenon is significantly different from its free software antecedent. Its emergence accentuates the fundamental alteration of the basic ground-rules in the software landscape, signifying the end of the proprietary-driven model that has prevailed for the past 20 years or so. Thus, a clear understanding of the characteristics of the emergent OSS 2.0 phenomenon is required to address key challenges for research and practice.

Acknowledgements: The development of NeBIC theory has benefited greatly from the detailed guidance of the editor, associate editor, and reviewers. I also wish to thank research associate Michael Williams and Arvin Sayam for their valuable assistance and healthy debate in maturing the ideas presented here. NeBIC: A Dynamic Capabilities Theory for Assessing Net-enablement We propose the Net-enabled Business Innovation Cycle as an applied dynamic capabilities theory for measuring, predicting, and understanding a firm’s ability to create customer value through the business use of digital networks. The theory incorporates both a variance and process view of netenabled business innovation. It identifies four sequenced constructs: Choosing new IT, Matching with Economic Opportunities, Executing Business Innovation for Growth, and Assessing Customer Value, along with the processes and events that inter-relate them as a cycle. The sequence of these theorized relationships for net-enablement asserts that choosing IT precedes rather than aligns with corporate strategy. The theory offers a logically consistent and falsifiable basis for grounding research programs on metrics of net-enabled business innovation. NeBIC Page 1 1

While the course of technological change is widely accepted to be highly uncertain and unpredictable, little work has identified or studied the ultimate sources and causes of that uncertainty. This paper proposes that purely technological uncertainty derives from inventors ’ search processes with unfamiliar components and component combinations. Experimentation with new components and new combinations leads to less useful inventions on average, but it also implies an increase in the variability that can result in both failure and breakthrough. Negative binomial count and dispersion models with patent citation data demonstrate that new combinations are indeed more variable. In contrast to predictions, however, the reuse of components has a nonmonotonic and eventually positive effect on variability.

Institutional entrepreneurship implicit in a firm's sponsorship of its technology as a common standard is beset by several challenges. These challenges arise from a standard's property to enable and constrain even as potential competitors agree to cooperate on its creation. Our exploration of Sun Microsystems's sponsorship of its Java technology suggests that standards-in-the-making generate seeds of selfdestruction.

This study links theories concerning methods that firms use to acquire technology with theories concerning types of technological change. We place particular emphasis on interorganizational relationships. We predict that firms will often acquire know-how needed for encompassing technological change through equity-based arrangements with other organizations, complementary technological changes through nonequity interorganizational arrangements, and incremental changes through internal R&D. Our theory draws on perspectives that emphasize the need to develop new competencies within a business organization and to protect the value of existing competencies. Our empirical analysis examines methods of technology acquisition that firms have used in the commercialization of medical lithotripters, which are devices that fragment stones in the kidney and gall bladder. The analysis contributes to a better understanding of how technology acquisition methods vary with the manner in which technological change relates to a firm’s existing capabilities. The study also helps develop our understanding of the evolutionary processes by which capabilities diffuse through an industry. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Firms often must acquire new know-how as technology changes in an industry. Past research identifies different ways that firms acquire new knowhow when technological change affects their businesses, including internal development and acquisition from other firms (e.g., Teece, 1986; Mitchell