A core idea in competitive strategy is that a firm’s ability to capture value depends on the creation of value: maximizing the gap between willingness to pay and cost. This value can depend on or be enhanced through complementarity, where the willingness to pay for an offering is increased in the presence of another offering. Substitutability is assumed to have the opposite effect.
This paper presents an easy-to-use measure of patent scope that is grounded both in patent law and in the practices of patent attorneys. We validate our measure by showing both that patent attorneys’ subjective assessments of scope agree with our estimates, and that the behavior of patenters is consistent with it.
Are divestitures really just the “flip side” of acquisitions? Both divestiture and acquisition are important processes for firm scope change. Frequently, these processes are considered to be “two sides of the same coin” wherein a divestiture is simply an acquisition performed “in reverse.” In contrast to this perspective, the authors submit that these two corporate strategic processes have fundamental differences in their motivations, implementation, and ramifications.
On Saturday, March 21, the Small Business Investor Alliance released a survey focusing on the effect COVID-19 is having on small businesses across the U.S. Kenan Institute Executive Director Greg Brown and UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School Ph.D. candidate Matteo Binfarè provided data analysis.
A central idea in the feedback seeking literature is that there should be a positive relationship between self-efficacy and the likelihood of seeking feedback. Yet empirical findings have not always matched this theoretical claim. Departing from current theorizing, we argue that high self-efficacy may sometimes decrease feedback seeking by making people undervalue feedback and that perspective taking is an important factor in determining whether or not this occurs.
North Carolina’s phenomenal migration-driven population growth masks a troubling trend: high rates of death and dying prematurely which, left unchecked, can potentially derail the state’s economic growth and prosperity in the years ahead. On average, 246 North Carolinians died each day during the 2010s, increasing to 317 daily between April 1, 2020 and July 1, 2022. COVID-19 and the substance abuse crisis have played a major role in premature deaths of prime working age citizens of the state. Both people-based and place-based strategies and interventions are urgently needed to address the state’s death crisis.
On Wednesday, October 20, Harvard’s Bill George and Three Ships’ Zach Clayton joined Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior and Associate Dean of the Undergraduate Business Program Shimul Melwani for a fireside chat. George and Clayton discussed their newly released book "True North: Emerging Leader Edition."
Despite having the deepest and most diverse capital markets in the world, the United States still struggles to provide sufficient capital to many small businesses outside of major commercial centers as well as to women-owned and minority-owned businesses regardless of size or location. This paper reviews the academic literature and provides an analysis of some recent data to gain understanding of the causes of these gaps as well as the solutions for filling the gaps. Results indicate that the Small Business Administration’s SBIC program is an effective mechanism for providing capital to underserved geographies as well as to businesses owned by women and underrepresented minorities.