Industries’ Potential for Interdependency and Profitability: A Panel of 135 Industries, 1988–1996
该研究开发了一个基于专利知识联合使用频率的衡量指标，发现行业平均盈利能力与相互依赖潜力呈倒U型关系，并纠正了以往研究中的遗漏变量偏差。
An industry’s potential for interdependency among productive activities is one of the central concepts in strategic management. Although theoretical models have clarified how and why industry average profitability should peak at moderate levels of interdependency, the empirical evidence so far has not supported the inverted-U-shaped relationship. By developing a measure that is based on how frequently pieces of knowledge are used jointly in technological inventions, we find strong support that confirms the predicted relationship between interdependency and industry average profitability. We also find evidence supporting an inverted-U-shaped relationship between interdependency and firm profitability. Moreover, our measure captures how the potential in interdependency may change over time within an industry. The temporal variation allows us to correct omitted variable biases, which poses concerns that weren’t raised in previous studies. The measure is created from more than 1.93 million technological patents that have been approved by the U.S. Patent and Trade Office between 1901 and 1996. Since patent data are available to the public, future studies can readily build on our measure of industries’ potential for interdependency.