Overview Findings Closing Comments

Coopetition in Inter-Firm Relationships

Altering the Assesment of

Resources, Capabilities and Competences

Jesper Mathias Nielsen Caroline Leifland

Jesper Mathias Nielsen LATEX2Á

Overview Findings Closing Comments

Overview of Thesis 1

Issue

Inadequate knowledge about coopetition in inter-firm relationships

in the light of seemingly paradoxical relationships and patent

strategies. Academically recognized knowledge lagoon.

Complications

Existing literature on coopetition does not go far beyond

naming and claiming

Academic discussions on coopetition are overly contrived in an

attempt to herald coopetition as something more than just

“old wine on new bottles”

Primary data pertaining to network-level coopetition is

di�cult to access and gather

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Overview Findings Closing Comments

Overview of Thesis 2

Question?

How should the assessment of resources, competences and capabilities be altered under conditions of coopetition?

1 Why do firms form coopetitive relationships?

2 Why can firms be observed to waive patent rights?

Answer!

Bridge the paradoxical observations to established theory on dynamic capabilities, knowledge dynamics, strategicalliances and innovation modes, thus transforming the knowledge gap to a matter of reformulation or

“old wine on new bottles”:

1 H1 : Experiences, learning activities and knowledge creation related to cooperative inter-firm relationshipswill drive firms to leverage accumulated alliance competences and maximize profits by seeking newrelationships in order to pursue adjacent business opportunities, thus increasingly moving toward acompetitive situation with the original cooperative partners, thereby creating coopetitive inter-firmrelationships.

2 H2 : When firms engaged in partnerships for up-stream co-development find their access to the core of a

collective pool of resources at risk of being restricted through claims of infringement on patents held by

firms adhering to proprietary innovation, the focal firms will acquire and waive patent right adjacents to

the endangered co-developed innovation.

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Overview Findings Closing Comments

Illustrating disruption

Jesper Mathias Nielsen LATEX2Á

Overview Findings Closing Comments

Illustrating disruption

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Kill your darlings 1

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Overview Findings Closing Comments

Kill your darlings 2

In sum, our analysis shows that while Apple does compete with Samsung, despite simultaneously being Samsung’s

greatest customer and Samsung greatly benefitting from imitating Apple’s phone products it does so in a manner

that appears non-direct in nature and on a basis of competition that is measurably di↵erent. Based on the

combination of data released by Samsung for the California court case and data gathered from a number of

comScore press releases, we show the competition is primarily about conversion of current non-smartphone users

and only rarely about capturing customers from rivaling platforms with churn between platforms being limited to

some 10 permille per month.

Jesper Mathias Nielsen LATEX2Á

Overview Findings Closing Comments

Test of H1

IBM’s century long presence on the business scene makes it an excellent maximum-probability case for the study of

dynamic capabilities at play. Hence, it is ideal for falsification purposes. Moreover, prior adherence to the discrete

organizations perspective qualifies IBM as minimum-probability case with regards to synergies from inter-form

relationships, making it ideal for verification.

Jesper Mathias Nielsen LATEX2Á

Overview Findings Closing Comments

Test of H1

Findings in case of the IBM PC and the later PowerPC

A notable change in approach to partnerships while partially

o↵ering the same functional competences

The significance of having access to complementary resources

and competences in the development of new and valuable

products

A significant level of inter-firm learning, which IBM embraces

in the AIM alliance through co-location and intertwining of

inter-organizational processes

We find support for H1 as IBM seemingly learns from its interaction

with Microsoft and Intel and uses the accumulated alliance

competences to navigate the market for computers and form the

AIM alliance, hence enabling an adjacent business opportunity.

Jesper Mathias Nielsen LATEX2Á

Overview Findings Closing Comments

Test of H2

Qualitative findings in case of the Linux

IBM’s enormous patent portfolio qualifies the company as an

excellent minimum-probability case for the study of patent waivers

as IBM according to traditional conjectures stands to lose the most

by not enforcing them.

Sutor, 2005 “ ”

“We hope that this [patent pledge] will stimulate discussion about the changing nature of innovation and new

collaboration models and (. . . ) also hope others will join us by similarly pledging patents to the commons.”

Moody, 2007 “ ”

“[The patent pledge] was designed to shake up people’s thinking about the use of software patents in open-source

and proprietary software.”

At the very least, the comments of the involved players suggests a

level of premeditation, which renders support for H2.

Jesper Mathias Nielsen LATEX2Á

Overview Findings Closing Comments

Test of H2

Quantitative findings in case of the Linux

Statistically significant di↵erences in the right direction in the normalized mean patent acquisition and application activity between

firms adhering to proprietary innovation and firms engaged in coopetitive private-collective development of Linux around the

publication of the OSRM report.

These findings render ex post support for H2.

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Overview Findings Closing Comments

Closing Comments

Conclusion, Managerial Implications

Why do firms form coopetitive relationships?

Firms form coopetitive relationships in an e↵ort to leverage accumulated alliance competences in the search for new

business opportunities. This corroborates the managerial recommendations presented in literature on learning races

in strategic alliances, as it advocates for managers embrace the competitive aspects of cooperative relationships

and through it trade long-term survivability for short term profits. Moreover, it showcases the shift in resource

assessment as the managerial skills that facilitates accumulation of alliance competences become relatively more

important.

Why can firms be observed to waive patent rights?

Patent waivers by coopetitive private-collective firms constitutes an internationally coordinated patent portfolio

strategy to disarm patent rights held by proprietary innovators. It shows how coopetitive relationships can be based

on resources that are controlled rather than owned to avoid hold-up problems, and this should be included in the

assessment of resources under conditions of coopetition.

Jesper Mathias Nielsen LATEX2Á

Overview Findings Closing Comments

Closing Comments

Discussion, Improvements and Critique

1 Focus: We could have focussed more on either dynamic capabilities in coopetitive relationships (andincluded the section we wrote on Apple vs. Samsung) or formative drivers of patent waivers, but doing sowould shift focus away from filling Walley’s research gap.

2 Data: At times our data collection is too focussed on storytelling and too little on rigorous case building.However, given the initially paradoxical observations the thesis is very much about portraying coopetitionexamples of paradigmatic quality for which storytelling is a strong tool.

3 Improvements: eliminate type 1 errors, EU Patent O�ce, figure 12 & issues found after printing.

Jesper Mathias Nielsen LATEX2Á