167: Strategic Management of Enabling Technologies: Challenges for Firm Innovation & Value Appropriation (17484)

Enabling technologies, such as machine learning, robotics, and internet technology, are generic technological inventions that can be applied to, and drive radical technological changes in a wide range of application sectors. While economists and policymakers have long documented the profound impacts of enabling technologies on our economy and society, strategy and organizational scholars are just beginning to investigate the implications of these technologies for firm innovation and value appropriation. On the one hand, the development and adaptation of an enabling technological invention often requires the development of complementary inventions in neighboring technology fields and application sectors, thereby creating a coordination challenge in the firm innovation process. On the other hand, the commercialization of an enabling technological invention requires complementary assets in a variety of downstream application sectors, creating significant hurdles for firm value appropriation. In this workshop, we bring together prominent scholars in the fields of strategy and organizational studies who are at the forefront of research on these topics. In this workshop, the panelists will discuss the new questions that arise with enabling technologies, and introduce theoretical perspectives as well as data and methods that can be employed to make inroads into these questions. Overall, this workshop aims to delve into the unique challenges and research opportunities that enabling technologies pose for strategic management research and enrich the theoretical grounding for studying enabling technologies.