Distributed product development projects encompass product and process development activities that span organizational and country boundaries. The increasing trend toward globalizing projects requires firms to coordinate development efforts made by team members from various functions within the...

Firms in advanced economies are increasingly outsourcing software and technology development as well as other knowledge work to a worldwide supply base. Standard economic and learning models predict that focal firms should outsource either all or none of a particular activity unless extra...

Competitive maneuvering in the information economy has raised a pressing question: how can firms raise profits by giving away products for free? This paper provides a possible answer and articulates a strategy space for information product design. Free strategic complements can raise a firm's...

This paper is motivated by examples of outsourcing that are not readily explained by widely established economic theories. We extend recent literature that develops the idea that outsourcing can help firms avoid overinvestment by specifying more precisely the conditions under which this thesis...

Managers of emerging platforms must decide what level of platform performance to invest in at each product development cycle in markets that exhibit two-sided network externalities. High performance is a selling point for consumers, but in many cases it requires developers to make large...

This paper surveys the literature and develops a framework for research into the integration of distributed knowledge work (DKW). Knowledge work is considered to be “distributed” whenever key decisions for execution of the project cut across organizational boundaries, as occurs under...

Cyclicality is a well-known and accepted fact of life in market-driven economies. Less well known or understood, however, is the phenomenon of amplification as one looks “upstream” in the industrial supply chain. We examine the amplification phenomenon and its implications through the lens...

We consider openness in private and socially optimal licenses under conditions where network effects and multiperiod innovation are both possible. For private firms, we model a variety of possible business models from completely closed to fully open, and find that opening a platform can increase...