We develop a formal model of the timing of resource development by competing firms. Our aim is to deepen and extend resource-level theorizing about sustainable competitive advantage. Our analysis formalizes the notion of barriers to imitation, particularly those based on time compression...

Why do some innovators freely reveal their intellectual property? This empirical puzzle has been a focal point of debate in the R&D literature. We show that innovators may share proprietary technology with rivals for free - even if it does not directly benefit them - to slow down competition. By...

We use a formal value-based model to study how frictions in the product market affect value creation and value capture. We define frictions as incomplete linkages in the industry value chain that keep some parties from meeting and transacting. Frictions, which arise from search and switching...

We formalize the phenomenon of disruptive technologies that initially serve isolated market niches and, as they mature, expand to displace established technologies from mainstream segments. Using a model of horizontal and vertical differentiation with discrete customer segmentation, we show how...

This paper studies the forces which determine how diversity at a firm evolves over time. We consider a dynamic model o a single firm with two levels of employees, the entry level and the upper level. In each period, the firm selects a subset of the entry-level workers for promotion to the upper...

The diffusion of new technology among competing firms is of long-standing interest in industrial organization. There is an extensive theoretical literature on technology adoption in which firms can instantaneously deploy a new technology in the market at a cost that is exogenously falling over...

This paper studies the forces which determine how diversity at a firm evolves over time. We consider a dynamic model of a single firm with two levels of employees, the entry level and the upper level. In each period, the firm selects a subset of the entry-level workers for promotion to the upper...