Fernando Suárez

Innovation, competition, and industry structure

Why some firms die while others survive? Survival has long been recognized as a basic goal for a manufacturing firm. At least in the long term, survival should be related to various measures of performance, such as market share and profitability. Advocates of population ecology have argued that life chances of organizations are affected by population density at the time of founding. According to this argument, organizations founded during periods of intense competition will have persistently higher age-specific rates of mortality than those founded during periods with lower numbers of competitors. At least for the case of manufacturing firms, there may be more profound causes than competitive turmoil that explain a firms survival chances. These have to do with the evolution of technology in an industry. Population density may only be a reflection of underlying driving forces based on technological change that determine the form and level of competition, the attractiveness of entry, and ultimately the structure of an industry.

An Empirical Study of Manufacturing Flexibility in Printed Circuit Board Assembly

This paper addresses the empirical verification of hypotheses that relate to the strategic use and implementation of manufacturing flexibility. We begin with a literature review and framework for analyzing different types of flexibility in manufacturing. Next, we examine some of the propositions in the framework using data from 31 printed circuit-board plants in Europe, Japan, and the United States. Based on our analysis and findings, we then suggest several new strategic insights related to the management of flexibility and some potentially fruitful areas for further theoretical and empirical research. Our findings include: more automation is associated empirically with less flexibility, as found in other studies; nontechnology factors, such as high involvement of workers in problem-solving activities, close relationships with suppliers, and flexible wage schemes, are associated with greater mix, volume, and new-product flexibility; component reusability is significantly correlated with mix and new-product flexibility; achieving high-mix or new-product flexibility does not seem to involve a cost or quality penalty; mix and new-product flexibility are mutually reinforcing and tend to be supported by similar factors; and mix flexibility may reduce volume fluctuations, which could theoretically reduce the need for volume flexibility.

Services, industry evolution, and the competitive strategies of product firms

Services of different types have become increasingly important for product firms. While these firms mainly focus on products, managers and researchers lack a comprehensive framework to understand when to make significant investments in particular kinds of services. We identify three categories of product-related services from a product firm – smoothing and adapting services, which complement products, and substitution services, which enable customers to pay for the use of a product without buying the product itself. We develop propositions about the relative level of these different kinds of services vis-a-vis industry evolution, as well as suggest how these services affect industry structure. We draw upon various literatures, though we conclude that the relationship between products and services is more complex and richer than any one literature suggests.

Closing the Technology Adoption–Use Divide The Role of Contiguous User Bandwagon

A firm may readily subscribe to a new technology but then fail to use it. This article advances existing technology diffusion theory by bringing in a new construct that can explain the likelihood of technology use after adoption. The authors define contiguous user bandwagon and show how this information diffusion mechanism can help in explaining the time to technology use. They test their hypotheses using data on the adoption and use of e-procurement technology (N = 3,158) in the early phase of its diffusion. The authors find support for the hypothesis that contiguous user bandwagon is a strong antecedent of time to technology use.

The Role of Services in Platform Markets

Most of the research on how platform leaders emerge, however, has neglected another factor: the potential role of services in this process. This chapter attempts to remedy that deficiency in the literature.

Economic reforms and the competitive environment of firms

This article lays out several hypotheses to establish a specific link between structural economic reforms and the competitive environment of firms. We test our hypotheses on data from the steel industry in three post-reform economies. We find that economic reforms tend to have a positive effect on environmental munificence, but they also produce short-term instability in the environment. We elaborate on the implications of our results for managers, policymakers, and scholars. Copyright 2007 , Oxford University Press.

The Answer is Blowing in the Wind of Creative Destruction: Reflections on the Strategic Management of Technology and Innovation Research

This is the introductory note to a special issue on the management of technology and innovation. It is not an exhaustive review of the vast literature to date, as this would be a difficult undertaking in itself, well beyond the scope of this introductory note. Instead, I limit myself here to highlighting some of the theoretical foundations on which our community has been built, drawing the attention to a couple of reasons behind its success (not only in numbers but also in terms of impact on academia and business practice), and pointing out examples of prominent work done by our members and the exciting new research that is taking place today and will continue to propel this field in the coming years.