Richard Wang

Academic Interest / Expertise

Competitive Strategy; Technology and Innovation ManagementAbstracts of Selected PublicationsProduct digitization and differentiation strategy change: Evidence from the book publishing industry (2024, Strategic Management Journal)We study product digitization as an impetus for firm strategy change. Product digitizationcan erode a firm's ability to differentiate throughphysical product attributes and prompts them toincrease emphasis on nonphysical product attributes tosustain their competitive advantage. We expect this effect is pronounced among firms that have pursued a physical differentiation strategy prior to the digital age. However, we expect that countervailing forces exist such that the internal supply cost of and the external market demand for the nonphysical differentiator mitigate this effect. Evidence from publishers in the Amazon Kindle e-book ecosystem supports our hypotheses. This study bridges the growing digital strategy literature and the classical competitive strategy literature. We discuss how our findings are relevant to a range of industries.Monitoring the monitor: Enabling strategic change when theformer CEO stays on the board (2022, Long Range Planning)Firms often retain their former CEOs on the board after succession to benefit from the formerCEOs’ firm-specific expertise. However, their presence can inhibit successor CEOs from implementingmeaningful strategic change, as the former CEOs seek to preserve their personal legacyand may see the strategic landscape differently, especially when the successor CEO is hired fromoutside the firm. Using a strategic leadership interface perspective, we propose that boardmembers can alleviate this potential tension and enable strategic change. To test our theory, wefocus on a subsample of succession events: when the former CEO stays on board as chair and thesuccessor CEO is an outsider. This scenario is likely to result in strategic tension and cognitivedifferences between these two organizational leaders. We find that in such situations, boards witha higher proportion of outside directors experience greater post-succession strategic change; wefind no effect in other succession scenarios. We isolate legacy conservation as a motivating factorby showing that the effect manifests for divestitures but not for acquisitions.Complementors' engagement in an ecosystem: A study of publishers' e-book offerings on Amazon Kindle (2020, Strategic Management Journal)In ecosystems, tensions between value creation and appropriation can arise when complementors form relationships with a partner that benefits from network effects. While creating value collectively, these relationships strengthen the network effects, which increase the partner's ability to appropriate value. We posit that complementors strategize their product offerings to benefit from the relationship with the partner while preserving bargaining power by keeping relationships with other partners as outside options. We examine book publishers' product portfolios in the Amazon Kindle e-book and the printed book ecosystems. Our results illuminate specific product offering decisions by large publishers that are more protective of the printed book ecosystem and less conducive to Kindle's success. This research adds to the literature on interorganizational relationships, platform ecosystems, and managing digital innovations.Alleviating the plunging-in bias, elevating strategic problem-solving (2018, Academy of Management Learning & Education)The plunging-in bias, not understanding the problem and not thinking about how best to solve it before starting to solve it, is a common but little recognized cognitive bias. Strategy education does not do enough to help students overcome it, and some teaching methods may even reinforce it. Yet, organizations highly value problem formulation and solving-skills and complain of their paucity. By bringing together research, teaching, and practice, we present several remedies to alleviate the plunging-in bias, and thereby, elevate strategic problem-solving skills. We propose frameworks for framing problems, deciding whom to involve in problem-solving, and determining the best approach for solving it; we describe ways in which problem-solving and strategic management can be taught integratively, and list ideas for new course material and research. By raising awareness of an insidious cognitive bias, we hope to advance teaching and research on strategic problem-solving.The Multifaceted Nature of Competitive Response: Repositioning and New Product Launch as Joint Response to Competition (2016, Strategy Science)The literature abounds with theories on firms’ response to competition, highlighting various response strategies. Although firms likely use combinations of these response strategies in practice, there is little attention to this in the literature. We investigate how firms coordinate two closely related strategies—product repositioning and new product launch. Our approach is to empirically document how firms use these strategies in response to moves by a dominant competitor, in order to provide insight and ground future theoretical development. Using data from the Chinese TV industry, we: (a) document that in most cases, firms respond to competitive approaches by simultaneously changing their position and product launch strategies; (b) interpret the nuanced response strategies that reflect the different combinations of repositioning and changes in product launch; and(c) assess which types of firms are more likely to choose these nuanced response strategies. We discuss how our findings can advance theory development of firms’ responses to competition.Competition-driven repositioning (2014, Strategic Management Journal)We study competition as an impetus for firms to reposition—to abandon their current positioning strategy and adopt a new one. We predict that as a strong firm moves closer, competition erodes the profitability of situated firms and prompts them to reposition. We expect this effect is pronounced the greater difference in competitive strength. However, we expect that countervailing forces exist such that the viability of alternative positions and the opportunity cost of abandoning a current position mitigate this effect. Evidence from a natural experiment in China’s satellite television industry supports our hypotheses. This research adds to the existing literature on repositioning, which emphasizes the phenomenon as opportunity-driven, and to the competitive interaction literature, which typically does not distinguish between noncounterattack strategies.Tournaments for Ideas (2010, California Management Review)We propose that well-designed tournaments are a powerful mechanism for stimulating innovation and organizing idea generation. Drawing on historical and recent examples, we explain why tournaments can outperform traditional incentive schemes when effort is difficult to observe, outcomes are uncertain, and performance is evaluated relatively rather than absolutely. We develop a framework for designing “tournaments for ideas,” examining how prize structure, entry rules, participant selection, and multi-round competition shape incentives and learning. We discuss the importance of evaluation and feedback in refining ideas over time, while also acknowledging potential drawbacks such as duplicated effort and excessive risk-taking. Our paper clarifies for organizational leaders and policymakers when and how to effectively use tournaments to elicit creative solutions.