Melissa M. Appleyard

Open Innovation and Strategy

The increasing adoption of more open approaches to innovation fits uneasily with current theories of business strategy. Traditional business strategy has guided firms to develop defensible positions against the forces of competition and power in the value chain, implying the importance of constructing barriers rather than promoting value creation through openness. Recently, however, firms and even whole industries, such as the software industry, are experimenting with novel business models based on harnessing collective creativity through open innovation. The apparent success of some of these experiments challenges prevailing views of strategy. At the same time, many of these experimenters now are grappling with issues related to value capture and sustainability of their business models, as well as issues of corporate influence and the potential co-option of open initiatives. These issues bring us back to traditional business strategy, which can offer important insights. To make strategic sense of innovation communities, ecosystems, networks, and their implications for competitive advantage, a new approach to strategy—open strategy—is needed. Open strategy balances the tenets of traditional business strategy with the promise of open innovation.

Employment Practices and Semiconductor Manufacturing Performance

This article analyzes the factors contributing to superior manufacturing performance in the semiconductor industry. Through an analysis of firm-level data from the United States, Asia, and Europe, we explore the relationship between firm performance along quality and quantity dimensions and three components of the employment system: skill development, employee participation in problem solving, and employee collaboration. We find that manufacturing success is related to the introduction of new production technology and the involvement of all occupations in problem solving under the leadership of engineers, who play a key (and growing) role in this high-tech industry. We find that the operators and technicians play a smaller role in creating high-performing semiconductor factories than has been found in studies of more traditional factories, such as automobiles and steel.

The evolving role of semiconductor consortia in the United States and Japan

This article examines the interactions between public and private actors as cooperation in the semiconductor industry becomes increasingly international. The latest manifestations of multilateral collaboration are two consortia: I300I based in the United States and Selete based in Japan. Through an analysis of their structures and their origins, this article provides a deeper understanding of the complexities facing industry-wide consortia, the role of the government in promoting or inhibiting cooperation, and the lingering rivalries that impede truly global cooperation in a dynamic, high-technology industry.

Relational Enhancement How the Relational Dimension of Social Capital Unlocks the Value of Network-Bridging Ties

We propose and test a novel approach to the dilemma that the very network-bridging structure most likely to provide access to novel knowledge may be ill-suited for the cooperation needed to successfully transfer that knowledge. We theorize that the relational dimension of social capital (e.g., tie strength) can act as a substitute for the structural benefits of network closure, and so a network-bridging tie yields more value when it is also strong. We further investigate if it is emotional closeness, interaction frequency, or trust that underlies this “relational enhancement” effect. The results from analyzing a bounded network in a large consulting firm and egocentric networks in the engineering division of a large manufacturer provide support for the relational-enhancement effect of tie strength and further identify trust as the key mechanism allowing network actors to unlock the value embedded in their network-bridging ties.

Knowledge Diffusion in the Semiconductor Industry

Considers firms’ management of knowledge creation, diffusion and implementation. In particular, examines the diffusion link in this chain and presents a new framework where an ocean of ideas flows much like an ocean current. Through its past innovative activity and its employees’ professional experiences, a firm is caught up in a “technology current”. The degree of knowledge diffusion across organizations depends on encouraging and thwarting this current’s forces. The framework suggests that the ease of knowledge diffusion depends on the degree of similarity in organizations’ technical prowess. As an example, knowledge flows in the semiconductor industry are examined through citations to Intel’s journal articles. The empirical findings show that Intel’s knowledge, codified in these articles, diffuses more quickly to organizations in Western Europe and Japan than those in Taiwan and Korea. This pattern coincides with geographic market leadership and suggests that knowledge networks exist across countries.

Open for business: emerging business models in open source software

Open source software (OSS) has come of age, and a number of maturing business models allow OSS companies to make a profit even when their product is distributed for free. This article considers the dynamics of value creation fuelling the proliferation of OSS and examines the business model factors that enable value capture. After interviewing leaders from over 20 OSS firms and organisations through early 2006, we found that three factors were consistently important in defining a vendor’s adoption of a given business model: software licence choice, which takes into account intellectual property ownership; management of developer communities; and the unique features of the markets and product categories in which the vendor participates. Considering these factors, we characterise seven business models. One striking finding is that it is rare to find business-model purity. The majority of firms in our sample are pursuing either blended business models or multiple models simultaneously.

Acceleration management: the semiconductor industry confronts the 21st century

In the recent generations of semiconductor devices, the semiconductor industry has been accelerating towards the limits of the physical sciences. As a consequence, technology managers in that industry face seven major challenges, which will threaten progress: process, complexity, performance, power, density, productivity, and quality / reliability. We believe that confronting these challenges requires a new approach to technology management both within organizations and between organizations that form the backbone of the industry. We call this new approach Acceleration Management. Acceleration Management first requires that firms cultivate deep technical knowledge and inspire creative solutions to seemingly insoluble technical problems. The second stage of Acceleration Management requires the necessary expertise to be pooled, which often demands inter-organizational cooperation. This paper explores these managerial imperatives and analyzes how new semiconductor firms - particularly in China - have created niches in the value chain even during a tumultuous time in the industrys history.

Managing Revolutionary Inter-Organizational Interdisciplinary R&D Project Teams

During the first hour of this presenter symposium the participants will discuss their research on revolutionary inter-organizational interdisciplinary R&D project teams, highlighting the importance of policy and program decisions, as well as team configurations, processes and emergent cultural states on performance outcomes. First, Beverly Tyler will draw on three literatures to present an integrated theoretical framework capturing how policy decisions and micro-foundations contribute to the development of team knowledge meshing capabilities necessary for revolutionary inter-organizational interdisciplinary R&D. Next, Nachiket Bhawe and Shaker Zahra will discuss the challenges of managing revolutionary new product development teams in the U.S. video game industry, where diverse skills and knowledge must be integrated in fluid teams many of which include members from outside the publisher firm developing the game. Then, Melissa Appleyard and Turanay Caner will discuss how a National Science Foundation-fund...

The creation of microelectronics-based visualizations to enhance science education and literacy

This paper describes an ongoing project to create web-based visualizations based on microelectronics and its underlying science. The visualizations are being designed to serve diverse groups ranging from high school science students, to upper division engineering undergraduates, to graduate business students. By substituting highly visual and interactive explanations for mathematical expressions, the project engages students with limited engineering background, while inspiring students who already have a strong general science background to pursue microelectronics in more depth. The paper describes both completed and planned modules, as well as the software tools investigated and/or employed.