\u201cDynamic gap bridging and realized gap set development: the strategic role of the firm in the coevolution of capability space and opportunity space\u201d

Building on the hypothesis that firm strategy is fundamentally a dynamic process of gap bridging between capability space and opportunity space, this article investigates the strategic role of the firm in influencing the coevolution of the capability space and the opportunity space. In more detail, it contributes to strategy literature by introducing and discussing a typological distinction of a few dynamic gap sets (i.e., potential gap set, realized gap set, deliberate gap set, emergent gap set), which are deployed in a comprehensive conceptual framework underscoring the causes and consequences of the gap sets evolution. Additionally, the framework proposed is able to shed new light on the distinction between deliberate and emergent strategies and to reconnect them to the objectives of innovation and execution they aim to achieve. This intellectual effort allows to synthesizing the dichotomy, already familiar to strategy analysis, between strategy formulation and strategy implementation and to enhance the hermeneutic and interpretive capacity of the conceptual backbone of this work. In an integrative fashion, whereas strategy formulation refers to the firm\u2019s mindful predisposition of the capabilities required to bridge the strategy gap between capabilities and opportunities, strategy implementation is concerned with the \u2018real\u2019 operational closure of the strategy gap

Coopetitive value creation in entrepreneurial contexts: the case of AlmaCube

In the burgeoning coopetition strategy literature, scarce attention has been paid so far to the role of coopetitive system of value creation in entrepreneurial contexts. With the aim of epitomizing a coopetitive system of value creation, we draw attention to the fact that coopetition does not simply emerge from coupling competition and cooperation issues, but it rather implies that cooperation and competition merge together to form a new kind of strategic interdependence between firms. Accordingly, coopetition strategy concerns interfirm strategy that allows the firms involved to manage a partially convergent interest and goal structure and to create value by means of coopetitive advantage. Drawing on a parsimonious set of theoretical antecedents (Dagnino and Padula, 2002; Dagnino and Mariani, 2007; Padula and Dagnino, 2007), this paper elaborates a comprehensive framework where the emergence of coopetition is linked to the configuration process of entrepreneurial strategies. In more detail, the paper focuses on the strategic role of the entrepreneurial firm in bridging the gap between the capability space and the opportunity space, by characterizing entrepreneurial coopetitive strategies according to the required objectives of execution vs innovation. Consequently, we show how coopetition can be the appropriate blaze to spark value creation in entrepreneurial contexts, where entrepreneurial firms have to select their strategic courses of action by capturing the right and well-timed opportunities frequently making use of limited capability base. Finally, the notion of coopetitive analysis, where the actors involved interact coopetitively, is introduced and illustrated as an appealing tool effective to recognize the potential for creating and sustaining coopetitive advantage in shifting entrepreneurial contexts. A few business mini-cases, where coopetition emerges in a variety of entrepreneurial contexts, illustrate how coopetitive analysis can be supportive of entrepreneurial strategies under the budding regìme of coopetition

Mobitizing Capital for Fostering the Early Growth of Firms: The Role of Business Angels in Nascent European Entrepreneurship

This chapter aims to discuss various aspects of the multifaceted relation between entrepreneurs seeking for finance to their early stage projects and business angels providing equity. In particular, we underscore the rationale for the emergence of the business angel networks in order to optimize search costs and the good match between supply and demand for funds. While business angel networks have found the way for their admittance in many European countries, in the USA, angel groups (or spontaneous investor associations) are far more developed. On the ground of a 5-year panel data extracted from the European Business Angel Network (EBAN), we explore in depth the intricacies and inefficiencies related to the action of the business angels networks in Europe and briefly juxtapose them to the Anglo-Saxon experience

NETWORKS, KNOWLEDGE AND COMPLEXITY : an Inquiry into the Architectural Dynamics of Strategic Networks

The purpose of the book is to provide an interpretative framework helping to understand the emergence and development of strategic networks and their multilevel architectures. Drawing on three complementary theoretical approaches (strategic network theory, the knowledge-based theory of the firms, and complexity theory), the book considers strategic networks as complex dynamic networks of knowledge, resources, and capabilities. This view is able to shed new light on the multilevel architecture epitomizing strategic networks and the specific processes of knowledge, resource, and capability transfer, sharing, and creation that occur within and between network levels. Accordingly, the volume clarifies the competitive ground and consequence of strategic networks' multilevel architecture and provides an in-depth investigation of the emergence and development of two strategic networks operating in different competitive and knowledge domains; i.e., STMicroelectronics and Toyota. The volume also scrutinizes the forces guiding network architecture dynamics. Agency and emergence are two forces underlying network dynamics, however the role and scope of each varies in relation to the evolutionary phase of the network and the architectural level of the strategic network taken into consideration. The volume delves into the theoretical background and the empirical relevance of the different forces underlying multilevel network evolution

Coopetition: Nature, Challenges and Implications for Firms' Strategic Behavior and Managerial Mindset

Dating back to Brandenburger and Nalebuff (1996)’s seminal work, management scholars have started recognizing that inter-firm interdependences across multiple industries are characterized by strictly intertwined features of competition and cooperation. Coopetition is the way these inter-firm interdependences have been labeled (e.g., Brandenburger and Nalebuff, 1996). While the “flavour” of coopetition has been to some extent present since Adam Smith (see our comments below on Smith’s (1759) Theory of Moral Sentiments), the recent and steady increase in the attitude of firms to cooperate has made this phenomenon much more visible and has started sparkling considerable interest on coopetition as a stream of research on its own. We claim that understanding inter-firm interdependences as a coopetitive game provides new challenges in the strategic behavior of the firms and claim for the need to develop a novel managerial mindset and a coopetitive strategy (Dagnino, 2007). Whereas various authors (Brandenburger and Nalebuff, 1996; Lado, Boyd and Hanlon, 1997; Bengtsson and Kock, 1999; Gnyawali and Madhavan, 2001) have emphasized the growing importance of coopetition for today’s interfirm dynamics, scientific investigation on the issue of coopetition is at the beginning of its lifecycle (Walley, 2007; Tidstrom, 2008). Accordingly coopetition is a theme that tends to attract increasing attention from both strategy research (Baglieri, Dagnino, Giarratana and Gutierrez 2008) and practice (Dagnino and Rocco, 2009). This chapter contributes to the debate on coopetition by providing an analytical understanding of the nature of coopetition and claiming for the need to recognize its challenging implications for strategy. By suggesting that coopetition is a matter of “incomplete interest (and goal) congruence” shaping firms’ interdependence (Padula and Dagnino, 2007), we point up that coopetition does not simply emerge from coupling competition and cooperation issues, but it rather implies that cooperation and competition merge together to form a new kind of strategic interdependence between firms, giving rise to a coopetitive system of value creation (Dagnino, 2009). This argument urges to recognize the emergence of a new managerial mindset to steer interfirm dynamics. Incidentally, it is interesting to recall that, as early as in the nineteenth century, two founding fathers and early presidents of the United States of America, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, were meaningfully termed as “rival friends”. Actually, they had been initially good friends and then fierce political opponents in different periods of their long lifetimes. Notwithstanding that, at sunset of their lives at that time retired in their respective buen retiros, they started and maintained a pretty intense correspondence, wherein each of them, while accepting to openly and serenely confront it with the other’s opinion, retained his appraisal on a variety of subject matters. This book chapter is organized as follows. It first provides an analytical content to the concept of coopetition as a synthesis between two opposite, ideal perspectives – i.e., competition and cooperation. In doing so, it starts illustrating the limitations of the two perspectives and then move to show analytically how these limitations are overcome and accommodated within the new understanding of firms dynamics provided by coopetiton. Then, this book chapter describes some basic properties that shape the context of coopetition and illustrates the challenges that coopetition procures to the firms, claiming for the need to develop a novel managerial mindset that may guide a new (coopetitive) strategic behaviour