Friends of Strategy Science,
We are pleased to announce the 2024 Strategy Science Best Paper Award has been given to:
From the comments of the awards committee:
"Adner, Ruiz-Aliseda and Zemsky offer important insights about some basic questions of competitive positioning. Our MBA classrooms have longed echoed Porter's observations regarding firms potentially being "stuck in the middle" and the associated need to establish more of a pure play cost or leadership position. However, as Adner et al show, once we recognize the role of fixed costs and scale economies, this proposition breaks down. A firm that is situated so as to serve the bulk of the market, the middle as it were, can make the investments in R&D, product development and such so as to increase quality and willingness to pay without greatly weakening its cost position. However, Adner et al point to boundaries of the viability of this middle ground-in settings of a high degree of heterogeneity among consumers preferences for quality and willingness to pay, the specialist equilibrium suggested by Porter may be realized.
The work is impressive methodologically for its rigor and its mapping of that rigorous analysis to practical tools of strategic analysis. They revisit the "value stick" apparatus of the value-added approach, introducing the role of scale and the allocation of fixed costs-key properties of business enterprises that have been lacking in the standard use of this tool that has focused on variable costs and margins."
Thank you to this year's awards committee: Dan Levinthal, Giovanni Gavetti, and Michael Lenox.
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