Sarah Lubik

Market‐pull and technology‐push in manufacturing start‐ups in emerging industries

Purpose – As traditional manufacturing, previously vital to the UK economy, is increasingly outsourced to lower‐cost locations, policy makers seek leadership in emerging industries by encouraging innovative start‐up firms to pursue competitive opportunities. Emerging industries can either be those where a technology exists but the corresponding downstream value chain is unclear, or a new technology may subvert the existing value chain to satisfy existing customer needs. Hence, this area shows evidence of both technology‐push and market‐pull forces. The purpose of this paper is to focus on market‐pull and technology‐push orientations in manufacturing ventures, specifically examining how and why this orientation shifts during the firms formative years.Design/methodology/approach – A multiple case study approach of 25 UK start‐ups in emerging industries is used to examine this seldom explored area. The authors offer two models of dynamic business‐orientation in start‐ups and explain the common reasons for s...

Value creation strategies for science-based business: A study of advanced materials ventures

Abstract Science-based businesses have become the main drivers of commercialization for radical technological advances, but face high technology uncertainty over long time frames, the need for significant complementary assets and require substantial financing. Advanced materials ventures are a sparsely studied type of science-based business, though sufficiently different from others, such as biotech, to merit individual study. What strategies do advanced materials ventures use to overcome their daunting commercialization challenges? To address this question, this paper draws on literature on value creation and advanced materials commercialization, and presents new evidence from a sample of 43 advanced materials ventures from three countries. Through a hierarchical cluster analysis, the sample is subdivided into nanomaterials, performance materials, and fuel cell ventures and sub-group commercialization characteristics are described and compared. We find empirical support for an earlier model of value creation by advanced materials ventures, and identify successful commercialization strategies according to sub-group. Our findings suggest that embracing uncertainty enhances value creation for nanomaterials and performance materials ventures but can diminish value creation for ventures commercializing fuel cell technologies. Successful firms commercializing nanomaterials and performance materials leveraged the generic nature of their technologies to achieve higher value creation, but tailored the technology to each target market. In contrast, successful fuel cell firms integrated further forward along their value chains and standardized their products across target markets.

Organizational Emergence and Firm Formation

This article presents the emergence and evolution of an organization as a response to the demands faced by the newly created firm, shaped by a process of problem solving in response to change emerging both from the environment and from the firm itself. Successful firms are those that successfully adapt as demands evolve, in this case, specifically with respect to their organization. Such adaptation requires flexibility and diversity within the firm, attributes that must be shaped by the firms managers.

Embracing Uncertainty: Value Creation by Advanced Materials Ventures

How do advanced materials ventures overcome the daunting commercialization challenges of the sector: high technology and market uncertainty over long time frames, and the need for significant complementary assets and substantial financing? Does uncertainty enhance or obstruct value creation? To address these questions, this paper draws on research on value creation, technology commercialization, and, more specifically, advanced materials commercialization, and presents new evidence from a sample of 43 advanced materials ventures. The sample ventures are compared and analyzed to elucidate risk reduction and value creation strategies. The sample is subdivided into nanomaterials, performance materials, and fuel cell ventures through a hierarchical cluster analysis, and subgroup commercialization metrics are described and compared.We argue that embracing uncertainty enhances value creation for nanomaterials and performance materials ventures but diminishes value creation for fuel cell ventures. High value creators in our sample lend further support to this argument through their commercialization strategies: reduction of uncertainty by fuel cell ventures, and embracing uncertainty by nanomaterials ventures. All of the successful advanced materials ventures commercialize radical technologies, emphasize strategic alliances, and begin demonstrating value with near-term, substitution applications.

Realizing the Potential of Advance Material Innovations

Advanced material technologies have received considerable attention from the media as potential engines of economic growth in an increasingly knowledge based economy. However, the extensive contributions of novel materials are not yet fully appreciated. Advanced materials have potential to enable other technologies and hence make a substantial and transformative impact on other industries and markets, including green technologies, healthcare, sustainable energy, construction, communications and defense. Like IT and biotech before them, advanced materials face many of the commercialization challenges of radical, generic technologies. Unlike their predecessor technologies, the value creation to which they could give rise is not readily demonstrated to their co-producers, customers or end consumers because of the complexity of their value chains and entrenched competition from incumbent products. This study investigates the market-oriented challenges facing AM University Spin-Outs (USO) and in particular, the evolution of their business models firm in response to other players. The choice of market and business model affects what value needs to be demonstrated to partners and can ultimately determine how much of a material’s potential value to society is realized. We build on the concept of innovation ecosystems to address these upstream innovations. A case study approach is used to elucidate the challenges that these ventures face.The findings highlight the way relationships between organizations can unlock the potential of entrepreneurial AM innovations. Partners are shown to be critical to a venture’s market selection and value chain positioning, determining not only what resources the venture can access but also the resource-base it needs to build to attract such partners. While current wisdom is that innovative ventures with radical technologies centre their activity on market niches, our cases show that potential partners, often large incumbent firms, may not be drawn by niche markets. Where substitute products already exist, ventures must adapt their business models to secure partner cooperation and clearly demonstrate the value they can offer.