Licensing technology essential to a standard can present a hold-up problem. After designing new products incorporating a standard, a manufacturer could be confronted by an innovator asserting patent rights to essential technology. A damages remedy provided by antitrust or some other body of law...

Disruptive technologies and business models profoundly affect existing markets. The most visible recent examples are Internet-based "sharing services" that are disrupting conventional taxi and hotel markets, but there are many others in diverse areas such as finance, retail electricity and...

I propose an economic framework for analyzing innovation effects of nascent competitor acquisitions. The framework identifies nine factors as key determinants of innovation effects. These factors are: replacement, nascent market size, synergies, appropriability, nascent market competition,...

In this paper we address the hard problem of search. Search is a pervasive phenomenon of biological and economic life. But search is hard—especially in uncertain and dynamic environments. We develop a generalized form of question-answer probing as a way of simplifying search, with implications...

This paper contributes to the analysis of where and how both exploitation and exploration may take place inside and between communities and organizations. It connects with the discussion of differences between communities of practice and epistemic communities. The analysis allows for differences...

In this paper we test the relation between cognitive distance and innovation performance of firms engaged in technology-based alliances. The key finding is that the hypothesis of an inverted U-shaped effect of cognitive distance on innovation performance of firms is confirmed. Moreover, as...

Disruptive innovation can be described as the introduction of a new conceptual idea or meme into an existing system that causes the system to be fundamentally altered. Assembly lines, air conditioning, digital film, and personal computers represent such innovations, all of which led to...

Businesses are responding to the threat of disruptive innovation technologies by upgrading their capabilities and practices. These upgrades ensure implementing organizations become more adaptable, and flexible, with respect to their ability to alter business strategies in response to changing...

The paper examines the allocation of inventive effort in complex product systems. I argue that complex product systems (e.g., personal computers) are distinguished by functional interaction among several components each guided by a relatively autonomous bundle of technical and economic...

The paper investigates the effects of Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) on corporate research and development (R&D) strategies using Community Innovation Survey (CIS) data on the Dutch manufacturing sector. The focus of the research is whether M&A affect corporate innovation strategies, favouring...