This article addresses the following question: How do family firms investing less in research and development (R&D) than nonfamily firms compete in R&D intensive industries? Using Japanese pharmaceutical industry data, we found that family firms produce more patents per R&D than nonfamily firms but are not biased toward low-value innovations. Further analyses of the distribution over innovation value suggested that family firms adopt a “contact-hitting R&D strategy,” avoiding radical innovations and pursuing incremental innovations compatible with their signature moves: innovation through tradition and narrow and internal search and resulting in may low-value innovations and a few mid or high-value innovations.

This study investigates distinctive investment behavior of family firms to distinguish among the diverse theories on the characteristics of family firms. Agency theorists emphasize reduced agency conflicts in family owned and managed firms due to alignment of interests between owners and managers. By contrast, family business researchers emphasize family owners' priorities to retain control of the business and their risk preferences caused by long investment horizons and a desire for continuity. Drawing from agency and family business literatures, we set the hypotheses on two distinctive investment behaviors: aggressive investment and patient investment. Analyzing the data on investment of the listed firms in the Japanese electric machinery industry, we show that family firms invest more than non-family firms. Such aggressive investment can be caused by reduced agency conflicts as well as by owners' risk preference. However, further analysis finds several results which are consistent not with the agency perspective but with the family business perspective. We show that family firms continue to invest under volatile and stagnant environments. Such patient investment can be caused by the risk preferences of family owners who have long time horizons and a desire for continuity. Therefore, not only ownership structure (equity share holding of management) but also being a family business (priority and risk preference of family owners) is essential characteristics of family firms which cause their distinctive investment behavior. © 2012 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.

We study dominant design strategies concerning the allocation of technological resources for ink-jet printers. We find that the dominant design for each firm can be quantitatively represented by the number of ink-jet patents in nine categories of a matrix that distinguishes patents according to method of implementation and type of module. Further, we find that annual firm ink-jet revenue from 1990 through 2000 is positively correlated with a balanced dispersion of patents across the nine categories. Results suggest that higher revenues will accrue to firms in integrated industries when resources are balanced among important sub-technologies in the dominant design. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Scholars from diverse disciplines have proposed numerous theories of business imitation. We organize these theories into two broad categories: (1) information-based theories. where firms follow others that are perceived as having superior information, and (2) rivalry-based theories, where firms imitate others to maintain competitive parity or limit rivalry. We describe conditions under which each type of imitation is most likely and offer guidance on identifying imitation in practice. Amplification effects and other performance implications of imitation are also addressed.