Competing in Ecosystems: Innovation and the Dynamics of Rivalry

Strategy & Business Policy

Speaker: Ron Adner

Professor - Tuck School, Darmourt

Conference  Jouy-en-Josas  / room meeting (T017)

Abstract:

This paper examines how competitive interactions among firms within a focal industry are transformed by the dynamics of competition elsewhere in an evolving ecosystem.  It presents an analytic approach that, by explicitly tracing the participants and interactions that underlie the joint creation of a value proposition, reveals a new mechanism through which competitive advantage can be won or lost.  Towards this end, the paper revisits three illustrative cases that are already well known to the strategy literature – superjumbo jets, video cassette recorders, and digital photo printers – and uses these to demonstrate the additional insight into competitive dynamics that can be gleaned by tracing the evolution of value creation through the evolution of ecosystem interactions.  By explicitly linking industry-level competitive dynamics with ecosystem-level shifts, the paper offers a bridge between traditional industry analysis and the emergent literature on ecosystem strategy.