Essays on technology innovation and new product development strategy

This dissertation consists of three chapters. Chapter One outlines the motivation and the structure of this dissertation. It also summarizes the major empirical findings and managerial applications. Chapter Two constructs a conceptual framework based upon Resource-Based View of the firm and applies Type II Tobit Sample Selection model to investigate the importance of intellectual property enforcement to firm's marketing strategy. The empirical results indicate that the level of firm's marketing and R&D capability, the centrality of individual technology to firm's future product development/technology innovation trajectory and the quality of intellectual property base generate significant impact on both its decision to enforce intellectual property and financial market reaction. Chapter Three focuses on the relationship between two different, but inherently correlated diversification processes of firm, i.e. product diversification and technology diversification. The financial consequence of these processes is also explored in this chapter. The study is deployed on the basis of theories of evolutionary economics and Resource-Based View of the firm. Dynamic panel data model is applied to obtain empirical evidence. The results show that path-dependency exits in these processes, product diversification and technology diversification have reciprocal impact on each other in the evolution process, and the level of diversity increases with firm's know-how about product and technology markets. These factors are also found to have sound financial meanings to firm.