How Much to Copy? Determinants of Effective Imitation Breadth

Csaszar, Felipe A.; Siggelkow, Nicolaj

doi:10.1287/orsc.1090.0477

Cited by 127 publications

(156 citation statements)

References 61 publications

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“…Only recently, scholars have started acknowledging that, in general, firms benefit from imitation (Csaszar and Siggelkow, 2010). These tensions might be the result of two conflicting predictions and empirical results concerning the conditions under which imitation is beneficial.…”

Section: Social Learning and Imitationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interorganizational imitation heuristics arising from cognitive frames

Nikolaeva

2014

Journal of Business Research

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The literature on organizational imitation mostly disregards its cognitive aspect. Yet, imitation is a cognitive heuristic for complex strategic decisions. The current essay draws a unifying framework of different models of imitation through a cognitive lens in the context of innovation adoptions. It describes the interaction of the framing of imitation and the organization's evaluation of an innovation. This interaction of threat and opportunity categorizations results in the use of various combinations of the two most popular imitation heuristics -"imitate the successful" and "imitate the majority" -as managers decide to copy predecessors in order to improve the status quo or to avoid losing it. Since the framings dictate different imitation timings, the speed of innovation diffusion depends on these interactions. However, as different cognitive frames may trigger the same heuristics, generalizations about the adoption motivation based on its timing can be unrealistic. Thus, this study contributes to the organizational learning literature by theorizing that not only past experience, but also social learning is subject to interpretations resulting in the use of different imitation heuristics. It also contributes to the decision-making literature by suggesting that complex decisions such as innovation adoption depend on the employment of imitation heuristics from Gigerenzer's adaptive toolbox.

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Section: Social Learning and Imitationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interorganizational imitation heuristics arising from cognitive frames

Nikolaeva

2014

Journal of Business Research

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“…In this scenario, given the many choices available, many companies choose a strategy of copying others [2,22]. The copying process itself can be understood as a way to enhance company performance [23].…”

Section: Copyingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…According to Csaszar and Siggelkow [23], -firms are exhorted to invest in capabilities that allow them to more quickly and extensively copy others, to implement ‗best practices,' and to invest in absorptive capacity.‖ The copying culture is supported by the idea that innovation in fashion is driven by the easy transfer of designs [3].…”

Section: Copyingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Original Design in a Copying - Intensive Industry

Bernardes¹,

Kauling²,

Chain³

et al. 2017

IJCA

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In some industries, copying is common and extensive. Most literature on the topic focuses on legal issues and interprets copying as a problem. To better understand the copying phenomenon, this study investigates the relationship between copying and design processes in five case companies in a copying-intensive industry. The findings reveal that unlike design processes, copying processes lack early conceptual activities. Furthermore, resources and contact with the end market are found to be prerequisites for professional and strategic design processes, whereas a lack of these better suits copying processes, especially in industries with low product variety and limited design problems.

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“…"imitation scope" (Csaszar & Siggelkow, 2010;Narasimhan & Turut, 2013). The second is how quickly to imitate, i.e.…”

Section: "Once We Become Self-consciously Aware That the Possibilitiementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Two basic questions face managers in this situation when they consider imitation as the best next move: the first is how much (e.g., how many product technologies) to copy, i.e. "imitation scope" (Csaszar & Siggelkow, 2010;Narasimhan & Turut, 2013). The second is how quickly to imitate, i.e.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Red Queen Competitive Imitation in the UK Mobile Phone Industry

Giachetti

Lampel

Pira

2015

AMPROC

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RED QUEEN COMPETITIVE IMITATION IN THE UK MOBILE PHONE INDUSTRYThis paper uses Red Queen competition theory to examine competitive imitation. We conceptualize imitative actions by a focal firm and their rivals along two dimensions: imitation scope, which describes the extent to which a firm imitates a wide range (as opposed to a narrow range) of new product technologies introduced by rivals, and imitation speed, namely the pace at which it imitates these technologies. We argue that focal firm imitation scope and imitation speed drive performance, as well as imitation scope and speed decisions by rivals, which in turn influence the focal firm performance. We also argue that the impact of this self-reinforcing Red Queen process on firms' actions and performance is contingent on levels of product technology heterogeneitydefined as the extent to which the industry has multiple designs resulting in product variety. We test our hypotheses using imitative actions by mobile phone vendors and their sales performance in the UK from 1997 to 2008. (Levitt, 1966: 38). INTRODUCTION "Once we become self-consciously aware that the possibilities of innovation within any one company are in some important ways limited, we quickly see that each organization is compelled by competition to look to imitation as one of its survival and growth strategies"The emergence of what has often been referred to as the "new economy" has greatly expanded research on the power of technological innovation to create competitive dynamics that can reshape industries (Baumol, 2004;Teece, 1998). While the focus on innovation as the engine of industry evolution reflects both the potential gains that accrue to first-movers (Lieberman & Montgomery, 1988), and the dramatic impact of disruptive technologies on the competitive landscape (Christensen & Bower, 1996), it inadvertently tends to eclipse the importance of imitation as an agent of change. Researchers that take a broader perspective see imitation as the twin process to innovation that, arguably like innovation, also plays a role in industry evolution in all contexts (Cohen & Levinthal, 1989;Levitt, 1966;Semadeni & Anderson, 2010), but takes on even greater significance in the rapidly changing technologyintensive industries that constitute the new economy. As Baumol (2004) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 technology -even if the technology is created by others -then its rivals can easily take the lead and make disastrous inroads into the slower firm's sales" (Baumol 2004: 246-247).Formulating an effective imitation strategy is a problem that confronts managers in any industry (Lieberman & Asaba, 2006), but in industries with rapid technological change the problem is compounded by higher levels of uncertainty about the market performance of new product technologies (Utterback & Suarez, 1993). This "technologic...

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How Much to Copy? Determinants of Effective Imitation Breadth

Cited by 127 publications

References 61 publications

Interorganizational imitation heuristics arising from cognitive frames

Interorganizational imitation heuristics arising from cognitive frames

Original Design in a Copying - Intensive Industry

Red Queen Competitive Imitation in the UK Mobile Phone Industry

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