Relevance of organizational capabilities and its dynamics: what to learn from entrants' product portfolios about the determinants of entry timing
研究了高速变化市场中企业进入时机如何依赖于不同时间点的能力相关性，发现初始和当前能力相关性各自影响进入时机，但初始相关性通过影响当前相关性起作用，初始不利的企业仍可通过提升能力相关性实现早期进入。
Abstract The resource‐based view of the firm suggests that the timing of market entry by a firm depends on its resources and capabilities, but several important questions remain. First, in a high‐velocity market where capabilities change quickly, how does entry timing depend on the capabilities at varying points in time? Second, how much flexibility does a firm have in altering its capabilities to achieve desirable entry timing? To answer these questions, this study sets out to develop a dynamic, refined version of the resource‐based view that parameterizes a firm by its time‐varying capability relevance with respect to a focal market, and makes predictions on entry timing and future growth of capability relevance. The study develops a novel approach that uses the entrants' product portfolios to infer a potential entrant's capability relevance. The results based on a panel of potential entrants show that the initial and current capability relevance each affect entry timing alone, revealing the persistent effect of the initial condition. However, given the knowledge of the current capability relevance, the initial relevance has no effect on entry timing, suggesting that the initial relevance affects entry timing through its influence on the current relevance. Firms that are in an initially unfavorable position can still achieve early entry, provided that they improve their capability relevance over time. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.