Abstract: With the increasing popularity of products such as smartphones, tablets, and computers that include open interfaces, individuals are becoming increasingly comfortable with complementary products where a product becomes more useful when combined with applications and accessories. Research on platforms and ecosystems addresses these dynamics, but tends to center on organizations competing at the core of ecosystems. This paper focuses on organizations at the edges of these systems and investigates changes experienced by firms as they join ecosystems and strive to balance maintaining independence and growth aspirations with the need to operate within an ecosystem. This paper contributes to research on organizational identity, resource dependence, and asymmetric inter-organizational relationships, and complements burgeoning research on multi-sided platforms as these businesses rely on ecosystems to succeed.

Abstract: Innovation is often studied as a unidimensional construct. While the construct’s presence along various dimensions is noted, the dimensions are never simultaneously analyzed. In this paper, we unpack innovation along three constituent dimensions, namely technological, geographic, and people. Using multi-modal multiplex network analysis, we measure the social capital of ties belonging to these dimensions and their ultimate effect on focal firm’s R&D strategies and innovation performance. The context of our study is an emerging industry thereby providing strategic implications for managing R&D to gain early mover advantage.

Abstract: This paper investigates how formal structure and informal network interact in shaping corporate entrepreneurial outcome at the business unit level in an established firm. In particular, I examine how decentralization of the formal organizational structure reshapes the effect of business units’ informal intra-firm ties with their lateral units (lateral ties) and with the corporate units (hierarchical ties) on their corporate entrepreneurial performance. Based on a sample of 455 market-based entrepreneurial initiatives in a large global home appliance company, I find that decentralization over time renders informal lateral network of business units from being redundant to valuable in facilitating entrepreneurial activities. Meanwhile, it strengthens the enhancing effect of business units’ informal hierarchical network on their entrepreneurial performance.

Abstract: The modern firm and its leaders are increasing interacting with a new form of organizational stakeholder: external communities. This research explores the firm-level performance implications of working with an external community. I use exploratory factory analysis and structural equation modeling to analyze original data survey collected from 250 organizations that work with a prominent open source software community. Factor analysis shows that firms engage in three discrete types of behaviors with a community: taking from the community, giving help, and giving code. I propose that that these behaviors, and their interaction, have differential effects on various aspects of firm performance.

Abstract: The literature on technological change has focused mostly to understand why certain technologies dominate the market. However, there are contexts where more research needs to be done, such as in the early stages of generic disruptive technologies collaboratively developed by universities and industry. Accordingly our longitudinal study shows that during the development process some potential applications commercially attractive are left out, reducing the spectrum of possibilities, and locking the process in. Further we suggest that he commercialization process, especially for generic technologies, involves the selection of particular applications among a large portfolio of potential technologies that could be developed. Agreements, decisions, and relationships at the very earliest stages of commercialization have a profound effect on which technologies are developed to even get to the market stage.

Abstract: Innovation is in large part fueled by novel ideas or novel combinations of existing ideas. The quality of the initial ideas can determine the success or failure of companies in the marketplace, making idea generation the highest point of leverage in the innovation process. With the advent of notions such as the wisdom of crowds and crowdsourcing, ideation has been opened up to crowds. Gaussian (normal) distributions are presumed in most management research. Yet, power laws often appear in the real world. If power law effects are ubiquitous in organizations, the activity of tapping into crowds for idea generation needs to be coupled to this statistical curiosity. Hence, the purpose of the present paper is to propose that academic attention should turn towards power laws in relation to large-scale idea generation.