The theoretical considerations and empirical results of this thesis emphasize the strategic importance of new technologies in general, and IT in particular.
The observation of an endogenous acceleration mechanism of technological development along a given para-digm suggests that early mover advantages can exist that are sustainable until the early mover has exhausted the possibilities of the paradigm, and competing followers begin to catch up (if they still exist then). In addition, early mover advantages can be sustainable even in the long run if there is free entry and exit in the market, if firms are not ex ante identical, for example if there are positive returns to scale, learning-by-doing effects, scarce complementary resources to the new technology, market reputation effects, or discount rates that are lower for previously more profitable companies. If first mover rents may not be completely extinguished by competing followers, it might be less profitable for late movers to adopt at all. Also, some firms might “pre-emptively”
adopt to capture strategic advantages, even if this would not be justified on ROI considerations alone.
From the adopters’ perspective, this implies that companies must be aware of the path-dependency and the strategic role of technology investment decisions. There are two crucial questions that firms need to answer when a new technological paradigm emerges:
1. Is there an alternative technological trajectory available to solve the same problems or to build up the same strategic resources? If alternatives do exist, then the adoption decision becomes not only a problem of opti-mal timing, but also a choice between alternative technological development paths. “Betting on the wrong horse” could put the very existence of the firm at stake. In this case, the timing of the decision becomes sub-ject to a difficult trade-off. On the one hand, being an early mover on the “right” trasub-jectory promises com-petitive advantages, not least because of a possible acceleration mechanism. On the other hand, it has some benefits to wait and see which of the trajectories reaches critical mass and emerges as the new industry stan-dard. However, once this is clear, it might be too late for the firm to capture early mover advantages.
2. If no technological alternatives exist to the new paradigm, firms still need to assess how substantial the tech-nological uncertainty is and how probable rapid techtech-nological improvements are in the future. Both of these effects make it more attractive to delay the investment. However, if technological uncertainty is limited and no dramatic technological improvements can be expected for the near future, an early mover strategy will probably be most beneficial, especially if an acceleration effect can be expected.
Arguably, these are tough questions to answer and choosing the correct development path and the optimal time to invest are clearly decisions with far reaching consequences that require a very profound knowledge of
the technological developments and of the behavior of other market players, such as competitors, suppliers, customers, and potential new entrants. Confronted with such a situation of Knightian uncertainty, firms might benefit from the knowledge of industry experts and consultants to choose their path of action.
The particular importance of e-business as a technological paradigm arises from its very general scope of ap-plication and from the fact that its underlying technology (the Internet) is subject to network effects and has al-ready reached critical mass. The technological problem that all e-business solutions try to solve is to optimize the exchange of commercially relevant information, which is essential for running and controlling any business.
They do so by providing specific software solutions that run on non-proprietary computer communication net works with a universally standardized protocol (TCP/IP). The “normal problem solving tools” of e-business technologies are applicable in various regions, sectors, firms, and functional areas. In many sectors, certain e-business applications are already the new standard for exchanging commercially relevant information and firms that are not able to keep up with this technological development face the risk of losing out to the competition (e-Business Market W@tch 2004).
-Yet, the results of this study also imply that the strategic implications of technology investments arise less from the technologies themselves than from the way the technologies are utilized to conduct innovation on the side of the user. Theory suggests that technology-induced innovations can lead to sustainable advantages, but only if not all rivals are able to perfectly copy the improved production process or product. In any case, even if firms are not able to appropriate private excess returns from the technology-induced innovation, conducting the innovation may still have a strategic value because it may help to defend market shares against competitors who also engage in innovations. Thus, technology-induced innovation may help to increase the chances of survival in a given market.
The presence of an endogenous acceleration mechanism also has some important implications for the suppli ers and marketers of e-business technologies and ICT in general: Firms that have previously invested into related technologies are more likely to make additional investments into such technologies. Thus, it should be much easier for technology suppliers to conduct further business with their existing clients or firms that are already advanced in using compatible technologies than to acquire orders from firms that are less advanced or on a dif-ferent technological trajectory. This will hold until the most advanced firms have exhausted the potentials of the new technological trajectory and reach a saturation level. Technology providers could actively benefit from this mechanism by systematically studying and understanding the purchasing behavior of their customers and the ex-istence of technological interdependencies.
From an economic point of view, it was pointed out that innovation and technological change may effect vari-ous important areas, such as the development of market structure, productivity, growth, and employment dynam-ics. The provided empirical evidence implies that IT and e-business technologies are currently important en ablers of innovative activity in Europe. Related research has demonstrated that IT investments in conjunction with complementary investments into human resources and organizational change does have positive effects on firm-level productivity and growth.
The results of this study also suggest that firms that successfully conduct innovations using e-business tech-nologies will grow faster than innovating firms. However, they will probably do so at the expense of non-innovating firms, especially considering the currently stagnating demand dynamics in many markets in Europe.
This might have consequences for the development of market structures. Also, there is evidence that technologi-cal advanced firms have a tendency to reduce employment, which suggests that e-business technologies can be used to substitute labor. Hence, a possible implication of this finding is that e-business technologies can be an instrument for firms to rationalize and restructure, leading to productivity growth at the expense of total em ployment in a low GDP growth scenario. Also, we may expect that the diffusion of e-business technologies will have a skill-biased effect on labor demand, favoring well-educated workers with ICT skills.
The finding that technological development at the firm level can be subject to increasing returns could be transferred to the aggregate level. If firms in a specific country get a head start in adopting technologies from a new paradigm, this might generate a technology gap vis-à-vis firms in other countries. This would provide an in-teresting alternative explanation why some countries become technological leaders and some followers, with possible consequences for productivity and per-capita income differences among countries (Barro and Sala-I-Martin 1997).
From a policy perspective, it is interesting to note that investments into innovation and new technologies might be subject to market failure, which can result in either too much or too little investment in technology compared to the social optimum. However, it is also not clear a-priori which scenario is likely to occur, if market
failure will occur at all, or what the social optimum would actually be in reality. Metcalfe (1995) and Mowery (1995) provide good surveys on these issues. Some empirical studies have also analyzed the effect of government intervention in the diffusion process. Evidence suggests that governmental intervention rarely speeds up the diffusion process and government-controlled firms do not move faster than privately owned com panies (Hannan and McDowell 1984, Oster and Quigley 1977, Rose and Joskow 1990).
-Numerous important questions regarding the dynamics of technology diffusion still remain open and present potential for future research. For example, a panel data analysis incorporating technology investment decisions and performance parameters (such as profits or market share) over time would provide valuable new insights into the dynamics of market structure development and technological change. From a policy perspective, many important questions still remain open that require further theoretical and empirical research: Does intense tech-nological competition lead to higher concentration ratios or monopoly market outcomes, and is such a scenario desirable from a social welfare perspective? What is the socially optimal level of investment into new technol-ogy and what role can policy makers play in reaching that optimum?
Also, the strategic dynamics of new technology diffusion, as proposed by stock and order effect models, need a more rigorous empirical analysis. How do real decision makers behave in such situations of strategic uncer-tainty? Furthermore, the role of risk with regards to the properties of technologies need to be disentangled from the role of ambiguity and the process of information acquisition about the new technology. As theory suggests, these are different concepts with different impacts on the diffusion process. Also, the rapidly emerging field of behavioral economics provides manifold evidence that actual human behavior in risky and ambiguous situations is very complex and only badly described by the standard assumptions of risk aversion or expected utility theory (see for example Kahneman and Tversky, 1979; Thaler et. al., 1997; Fox and Tversky, 1995; Schade et al., 2002). It has not yet been analyzed how these psychological phenomena influence the behavior of real decision makers in the specific context of technology investments in firms. Thus, we do not yet know how different in formation conditions and levels of uncertainty actually influence the spread of new technologies among firms in the real world where perceptions and risk attitudes of decision makers do matter. Empirical studies with real world data clearly have limitations to answer these questions. Instead, laboratory experiments might provide useful new insights because they allow to control and to manipulate risk, ambiguity, and information conditions in explicit ways. This could be subject to interesting future research.
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