R&amp;D, organization structure, and the development of corporate technological knowledge

Argyres, Nicholas; Silverman, Brian S.

doi:10.1002/smj.387

Cited by 478 publications

(416 citation statements)

References 66 publications

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“…Argyres and Silverman (2004) argue that centralizing R&D funding can be beneficial in that it minimizes ambiguity about a firm's R&D objectives. At TechMNC, product managers are not engineers or scientists; they are typically MBA graduates, responsible for providing strategic direction to the product development teams.…”

Section: Techmnc: Allocation Of Resources For Patentable Ideasmentioning

confidence: 99%

Innovation Outcomes in a Distributed Organization: Intrafirm Mobility and Access to Resources

Choudhury¹

2017

Organization Science

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Prior research has established a relation between intra-firm mobility and innovation outcomes at distributed organizations. The literature has also uniformly agreed on the mechanism underlying this relationship: the sharing of tacit knowledge and recombination of ideas that occurs because of intra-firm mobility. But a second mechanism may also be at work: intra-firm mobility might help distant employees secure access to resources for their innovative projects. Using unique data on travel, employment, and patenting for 1,315 inventors at the Indian R&D center of a Fortune 50 multinational, I find that intra-firm mobility in the form of short-duration business trips from a distant R&D location to headquarters is positively related to higher subsequent patenting at the individual level. I also find mobility immediately prior to meetings at which R&D funds are most likely to be disbursed to be related to higher subsequent patenting. This study sheds new light on how intra-firm mobility and possible face-to-face interactions with those who allocate resources might affect innovation outcomes and the matching of resources to individuals within a distributed organization.

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Section: Techmnc: Allocation Of Resources For Patentable Ideasmentioning

confidence: 99%

Innovation Outcomes in a Distributed Organization: Intrafirm Mobility and Access to Resources

Choudhury¹

2017

Organization Science

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“…SNA techniques have been widely adopted as one of the prevailing patent analysis tools [24]. In patent bibliometric analysis, citation and co-inventor information, which represent knowledge flows and inventive relationships among inventors, are suitable for formulating a network.…”

Section: Patent Co-inventor Network Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Investigation of Strategic Changes Using Patent Co-Inventor Network Analysis: The Case of Samsung Electronics

Choi

Park

2016

Sustainability

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Abstract:The aim of this paper is to propose a method to investigate a firm's strategic changes. Technologies or technological capabilities are a major resource for achieving competitive advantages, so a firm's R&D effort to improve capabilities on specific technologies is aligned with strategic direction. Therefore, this research analyzes changes in R&D efforts by identifying key R&D personnel using patent co-inventor network and social network analysis. Based on characteristics of application and granted patents, the method analyzes current and future R&D efforts and so identifies strategic changes of a firm. We conducted an empirical analysis using the patents of Samsung Electronics. Our method analyzed the current and future strategies of Samsung Electronics and the result shows clear strategic changes in their focal technologies and business.

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“…Breadth is measured as the total number of technological classes in which a firm applied for patents, prior to the time window for the construction of the branching variable. Depth is the maximum number of patents in any one technological class as defined by the USPTO (Argyres and Silverman, 2004).…”

Section: Control Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Patent filing year, patent class, assignee names, number of sub-classes, and number of claims were used to construct our patent data. Whereas patents have been used to identify outcomes of R&D activities, patents have been also used extensively to capture the technological capabilities or portfolios (Argyres and Silverman, 2004;Sampson, 2005;Zheng, Liu and George, 2010). …”

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confidence: 99%

Entry into new niches: the effects of firm age and the expansion of technological capabilities on innovative output and impact

Kotha

Zheng

George

2011

Strategic Management Journal

198

116

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We provide evidence that young firms systematically differ from older firms in their innovative output when they enter 'new to the firm' technological niches. We analyze data from 128 biotechnology firms since their inception and track these firms over time. Our analyses reveal that the organizational age at which the firm branches into new technological niches significantly influences its innovative activity. We refine the focus of the extant literature by separately examining the effects of branching on the quantity of innovative output, and the impact that this output has on the technology domain. Subsequent to branching into new niches, we find that older firms have a higher quantity of output than their younger counterparts; whereas young firms tend to outpace their older rivals with higher impact. The implications of these findings for the literature on dynamic capabilities and entrepreneurship are discussed. Entry into New Niches 3How does the timing of capability development matter? We examine whether the benefits that accrue to expanding technological capabilities are contingent upon firm age. We draw on the organizational aging and dynamic capability literatures to study how the expansion of a firm's capabilities by entering 'new to the firm' technological niches, termed as branching, at different points in the firm's age would vary in its influence on subsequent innovative activity.Though commonly assumed that startups create breakthrough inventions, some contrarian evidence suggests that mature incumbents also generate such discoveries (Dushnitsky and Lenox, 2005;Phene et al., 2006). In a study of large chemical firms, Ahuja and Lampert (2001) proffer evidence to suggest that mature incumbents overcome pathologies of aging by branching into new domains and by recombining new with old knowledge. Other researchers have investigated the temporal and structural effects of recombining new with old knowledge on innovative output (Nerkar, 2003;Rosenkopf and Nerkar, 2001;Rothaermel and Boeker, 2008;Yayavaram and Ahuja, 2008). We contribute to this conversation by examining the role of entry into novel technology areas, i.e. branching, and how the effects of branching on innovative activity vary with firm age.To examine whether the pattern of optimal technological expansion is conditional on firm age, we study innovative output of biotechnology firms from their inception over a twenty year period. This sample allows us to investigate the underlying conditions when firms optimize their output and impact by managing entry into new technological niches. The study engages the literature on capability development, especially in young firms. The entry into new niches corresponds with the expansion of a firm's technological capabilities to drive innovation within and across these technological domains. We also refine the focus of the extant literature by Entry into New Niches 4 separately examining the effects of branching on the quantity of innovative output and the impact that the output has on the technol...

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R&D, organization structure, and the development of corporate technological knowledge

Cited by 478 publications

References 66 publications

Innovation Outcomes in a Distributed Organization: Intrafirm Mobility and Access to Resources

Innovation Outcomes in a Distributed Organization: Intrafirm Mobility and Access to Resources

Investigation of Strategic Changes Using Patent Co-Inventor Network Analysis: The Case of Samsung Electronics

Entry into new niches: the effects of firm age and the expansion of technological capabilities on innovative output and impact

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