Papers Containing Keywords(s): 'strategic'
The following papers contain search terms that you selected. From the papers listed below, you can navigate to the PDF, the profile page for that working paper, or see all the working papers written by an author. You can also explore tags, keywords, and authors that occur frequently within these papers.
See Working Papers by Tag(s), Keywords(s), Author(s), or Search Text
Click here to search again
Frequently Occurring Concepts within this Search
Authors
No authors occur more than twice in this search.
Viewing papers 1 through 10 of 25
-
Working PaperInvestigating the Effect of Innovation Activities of Firms on Innovation Performance: Does Firm Size Matter?
January 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-04
Understanding the relationship between a firm's innovation activities and its performance has been of great interest to management scholars. While the literature on innovation activities is vast, there is a dearth of studies investigating the effect of key innovation activities of the firm on innovation outcomes in a single study, and whether their effects are dependent on the nature of firms, specifically firm size. Drawing from a longitudinal dataset from the Business Research & Development and Innovation Survey (BRDIS), and informed by contingency theory and resource orchestration theory, we examine the relationship between a firm's innovation activities - including its Research & Development (R&D) investment, securing patents, collaborative R&D, R&D toward new business areas, and grants for R&D - and its product innovation and process innovation. We also investigate whether these relationships are contingent on firm size. Consistent with contingency theory, we find a significant difference between large firms and small firms regarding how they enhance product innovation and process innovation. Large firms can improve product innovation by securing patents through applications and issuances, coupled with active participation in collaborative R&D efforts. Conversely, smaller firms concentrate their efforts on the number of patents applied for, directing R&D efforts toward new business areas, and often leveraging grants for R&D efforts. To achieve process innovation, a similar dichotomy emerges. Larger firms demonstrate a commitment to securing patents, engage in R&D efforts tailored to new business areas, and actively collaborate with external entities on R&D efforts. In contrast, smaller firms primarily focus on securing patents and channel their R&D efforts toward new business pursuits. This nuanced exploration highlights the varied strategies employed by large and small firms in navigating the intricate landscape of both product and process innovation. The results shed light on specific innovation activities as antecedents of innovation outcomes and demonstrate how the effectiveness of such assets is contingent upon firm size.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperCompetition, Firm Innovation, and Growth under Imperfect Technology Spillovers
July 2024
Working Paper Number:
CES-24-40
We study how friction in learning others' technology, termed 'imperfect technology spillovers,' incentivizes firms to use different types of innovation and impacts the implications of competition through changes in innovation composition. We build an endogenous growth model in which multi-product firms enhance their products via internal innovation and enter new product markets through external innovation. When learning others' technology takes time due to this friction, increased competitive pressure leads firms with technological advantages to intensify internal innovation to protect their markets, thereby reducing others' external innovation. Using the U.S. administrative firm-level data, we provide regression results supporting the model predictions. Our findings highlight the importance of strategic firm innovation choices and changes in their composition in shaping the aggregate implications of competition.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperIncidence and Performance of Spinouts and Incumbent New Ventures: Role of Selection and Redeployability within Parent Firms
September 2021
Working Paper Number:
CES-21-27
Using matched employer-employee data from 30 U.S. states, we compare spinouts with new ventures formed by incumbents (INCs). We propose a selection-based framework comprising idea selection by parents to internally implement ideas as INCs, entrepreneurial selection by founders to form spinouts, and managerial selection to close ventures. Consistent with parents choosing better ideas in the idea selection stage, we find that INCs perform relatively better than spinouts, and more so with larger parents. Regarding the entrepreneurial selection stage, we find evidence consistent with resource requirements being a greater entry barrier to spinouts and greater information asymmetry promoting spinout formation. Parents' resource redeployment opportunities are associated with lower relative survival of INCs, consistent with their being subject to greater selection pressures in the managerial selection stage.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperThe Reallocation Myth
April 2018
Working Paper Number:
CES-18-19
There is a widely held view that much of growth in the U.S. can be attributed to reallocation from low to high productivity firms, including from exiting firms to entrants. Declining dynamism ' falling rates of reallocation and entry/exit in the U.S. ' have therefore been tied to the lackluster growth since 2005. We challenge this view. Gaps in the return to resources do not appear to have narrowed, suggesting that allocative efficiency has not improved in the U.S. in recent decades. Reallocation can also matter if it is a byproduct of innovation. However, we present evidence that most innovation comes from existing firms improving their own products rather than from entrants or fast-growing firms displacing incumbent firms. Length: 26 pagesView Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperHow Wide Is the Firm Border?
January 2017
Working Paper Number:
CES-17-35
We quantify the normally unobservable forces that determine the boundary of the firm; that is, which transactions are mediated by ownership control as opposed to contracts or markets. To do so, we examine the shipment decisions of tens of thousands of establishments that produce and distribute a variety of products throughout the goods-producing sector. We examine how a firm's willingness to ship over distance varies with whether the recipient is owned by the firm. Because shipping costs increase with distance for many reasons, a greater volume of internal transactions at any given distance reveals the size of the firm's perceived net cost advantage of internal transactions. We find that the firm boundary is notably wide. Having one more vertically integrated downstream establishment in a location has the same effect on transaction volumes to that location as does a 40 percent reduction in distance between sender and destination. We further characterize how this 'internal advantage' varies with observable attributes of the transaction or product being shipped. Finally, we conduct a calibration of a multi-sector general equilibrium trade model and find that costs associated with transacting across firm boundaries also have discernible economy-wide implications.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperHow Destructive is Innovation?
January 2017
Working Paper Number:
CES-17-04
Entrants and incumbents can create new products and displace the products of competitors. Incumbents can also improve their existing products. How much of aggregate productivity growth occurs through each of these channels? Using data from the U.S. Longitudinal Business Database on all non-farm private businesses from 1976'1986 and 2003'2013, we arrive at three main conclusions: First, most growth appears to come from incumbents. We infer this from the modest employment share of entering firms (defined as those less than 5 years old). Second, most growth seems to occur through improvements of existing varieties rather than creation of brand new varieties. Third, own-product improvements by incumbents appear to be more important than creative destruction. We infer this because the distribution of job creation and destruction has thinner tails than implied by a model with a dominant role for creative destruction.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperData in Action: Data-Driven Decision Making in U.S. Manufacturing
January 2016
Working Paper Number:
CES-16-06
Manufacturing in America has become significantly more data-intensive. We investigate the adoption, performance effects and organizational complementarities of data-driven decision making (DDD) in the U.S. Using data collected by the Census Bureau for 2005 and 2010, we observe the extent to which manufacturing firms track and use data to guide decision making, as well as their investments in information technology (IT) and the use of other structured management practices. Examining a representative sample of over 18,000 plans, we find that adoption of DDD is earlier and more prevalent among larger, older plants belonging to multi-unit firms. Smaller single-establishment firms adopt later but have a higher correlation with performance than similar non-adopters. Using a fixed-effects estimator, we find the average value-added for later DDD adopters to be 3% greater than non-adopters, controlling for other inputs to production. This effect is distinct from that associated with IT and other structured management practices and is concentrated among single-unit firms. Performance improves after plants adopt DDD, but not before ' consistent with a causal relationship. However, DDD-related performance differentials decrease over time for early and late adopters, consistent with firm learning and development of organizational complementarities. Formal complementarity tests suggest that DDD and high levels of IT capital reinforce each other, as do DDD and skilled workers. For some industries, the benefits of DDD adoption appear to be greater for plants that delegate some decision making to frontline workers.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperWHAT DO I TAKE WITH ME?: THE MEDIATING EFFECT OF SPIN-OUT TEAM SIZE AND TENURE ON THE FOUNDER-FIRM PERFORMANCE RELATIONSHIP
April 2013
Working Paper Number:
CES-13-17
Our study examines the mediating effect of spin-out team characteristics on the relationship between founder quality and parent and spin-out performance. Since the ability to transfer or recreate complementary assets is a critical determinant of performance, we theorize and show that founders with greater ability impact both parent firm and spin-out performance by assembling teams that represent strong complementary human capital. Using linked employee-employer US Census data from the legal services industry, we find founding team size and tenure mediate the founder quality effect. Our findings have practical implications for both managers of existing firms and aspiring founders as it relates to their human resource strategies: the factor most salient to performance is not the individual quality per se, but the manner in which it impacts the transfer and spillover of complementary human capital.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperGrowth Through Heterogeneous Innovations
June 2012
Working Paper Number:
CES-12-08
We study how exploration versus exploitation innovations impact economic growth through a tractable endogenous growth framework that contains multiple innovation sizes, multiproduct firms, and entry/exit. Firms invest in exploration R&D to acquire new product lines and exploitation R&D to improve their existing product lines. We model and show empirically that exploration R&D does not scale as strongly with firm size as exploitation R&D. The resulting framework conforms to many regularities regarding innovation and growth differences across the firm size distribution. We also incorporate patent citations into our theoretical framework. The framework generates a simple test using patent citations that indicates that entrants and small firms have relatively higher growth spillover effects.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperThe Productivity Advantage and Global Scope of U.S. Multinational Firms
August 2011
Working Paper Number:
CES-11-23
This paper examines whether the productivity of U.S. business establishments is related to the extent to which their parent firms are globally engaged--from being an exporter to being a fledgling multinational that has taken a few cautious forays into foreign markets to being a seasoned multinational with extensive foreign operations. Theory suggests that multinationals possess proprietary assets that confer a productivity advantage over their domestically-oriented rivals, and that this advantage is positively correlated with the global scope of a firm's operations. That is, those firms with the greatest productivity advantage are able to absorb the costs and overcome the risks of operating in a wide range of foreign countries, from those where it is relatively riskfree and economical to operate, to those where it is risky, difficult, and costly. This connection between the multinational's widening of its geographic scope of operations and its productivity can be self-reinforcing. Once a multinational has successfully operated in a risky environment, it may benefit from learning effects that can lower the cost and risk of further enlargement of geographic scope. The positive correlation between a firm's global engagement and its level of productivity has already been demonstrated. This paper extends that research by testing whether the correlation holds up when productivity is measured at the level of the individual establishment, rather than at the level of the consolidated business enterprise. It also examines whether the correlation between global engagement and productivity exists in non-manufacturing industries. Finally, it examines whether linkages between the multinational's domestic and foreign operations, in the form of imports of goods by the parent company from its foreign affiliates, enhance the productivity of the multinational's domestic business establishments. The findings confirm the positive correlation between global scope and productivity and demonstrate that it holds for both manufacturing and non-manufacturing industries. The effect of imports of goods from foreign affiliates on the productivity of the establishments of their parent firm depend on the geographic location of the affiliates: Imports from affiliates in high-income countries tend to be associated with high productivity whereas those from affiliates in low-income countries tend to be associated with low productivity. The study was made possible by combining BEA enterprise-level data on the U.S. operations of U.S. multinational firms with data on all U.S. business establishments collected by the Census Bureau in the U.S. economic census covering 2002.View Full Paper PDF
