Untangling the origins of competitive advantage

By Iain M. Cockburn, Rebecca Henderson, Scott Stern. 2011

381 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper begins to reconcile competing perspectives on the origins of competitive advantage by examining the adoption of ‘science-driven’ drug discovery, a performance-enhancing organizational practice. Science-driven drug discovery diffused slowly, allowing us to disentangle alternative theories of organizational heterogeneity. Adoption is driven by initial conditions, time-varying internal and external environmental conditions, and convergence (firms positioned least favorably adopt most aggressively). While accounting for initial conditions is critical, managers are sensitive to idiosyncratic environmental cues. The origins of competitive advantage may therefore lie in the ability to identify and respond to environmental cues well in advance of observing performance-oriented pay-offs. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Subfields: Finance, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c3572dcd4484ce95a129f959c67f4e5f0f7dd658

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Citations in the corpus

R&D, internationalization and growth of newly listed firms: European evidence (2009, background): “the ability of newly listed firms to engage in R&D may be related to their previous efforts to develop a knowledge base (Cockburn et al., 2000; Helfat, 1997).”
CEO Narcissism, Audience Engagement, and Organizational Adoption of Technological Discontinuities (2013, methodology): “To further control for the capability to absorb new scientific knowledge, we measured the total number of scientific publications per firm yeart-1, using ISI Web of Science (Cockburn, Henderson, and Stern, 2000).”
Knowing when to leap: Transitioning between exploitative and explorative R&D (2014, background): “Second, they must also recognize the environmental cues that indicate the costs of defense are beginning to exceed benefits and implement disruptive exploration processes in order to develop new competencies (Cockburn, Henderson, and Stern, 2003).”
Resource Structuring or Capability Building? An Empirical Study of the Business Value of Information Technology (2012, background): “Capabilities are not always linked to a firm’s strategy, whereas competencies are defined as being closely related to the development, selection, and implementation of a firm’s strategy [19, 44].”
The dynamic impact of innovative capability and inter-firm network on firm valuation: A longitudinal study of biotechnology start-ups (2010, result): “Results of this study also confirm arguments made by Cockburn et al. (2000).”
Relational Contracts and Organizational Capabilities (2012, neutral): “drug discovery” (Cockburn et al. 2000).”
Mental Models, Decision Rules, and Performance Heterogeneity (2011, background): “…findings also help address an important challenge facing the strategy field about whether more accurate mental models enable managers ex ante to identify and interpret signals from their business environment that lead to superior strategic choices and performance outcomes (Cockburn et al., 2000).”
Cognition and Renewal: Comparing CEO and Organizational Effects on Incumbent Adaptation to Technical Change (2009, background): “then the technology should be recognized and adopted more quickly (Cockburn et al. 2000).”