Interdependence, Perception, and Investment Choices: An Experimental Approach to Decision Making in Innovation Ecosystems
通过五项实验，研究决策者如何感知和评估相互依赖环境中的风险，发现当成功概率以各组成部分单独呈现时，人们会更乐观，导致项目估值膨胀、过度增加合作伙伴和过度投入。
We explore how decision makers perceive and assess the level of risk in interdependent settings. In a series of five experiments, we examine how individuals set expectations for their own project investments when their success is contingent on the success of multiple, independent partners. We find that individuals are subjectively more confident and optimistic in an interdependent venture when its chances of success are presented as separate probabilities for each component and that this optimism is exacerbated by a greater number of critical partners, leading to (1) the inflation of project valuations, (2) the addition of excessive partners to a project, and (3) overinvestment of effort in the development of one’s own component within an interdependent venture. We examine these dynamics in settings of risky choice (with exogenously given probabilities) and in an economic coordination game (with the ambiguity of agency and strategic risk). We conduct our study with a wide range of participant samples ranging from undergraduates to senior executives. Collectively, our findings hold important implications for the ways in which individuals, organizations, and policymakers should approach and assess their innovation choices in ecosystem settings.