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The article seeks to explain how companies seeking to fuel growth by entering new markets should analyze when it is wise to be an early mover, fast follower or late follower. Each option requires a different competitive strategy.

The paper observes how three companies used early mover advantage to cement leadership in certain markets. It then suggests what approaches and industry circumstances allow fast followers and late followers in other settings to triumph.

The paper reveals that to chart potential strategies, managers should determine where their enterprise fits among three general types of business models: Solution shops like niche scientific instrument makers and customized software application developers create specially made offerings. They often dominate at the early stage of an industry. Value‐chain business models organize companies like automakers into systems that promote efficiency, consistency, market power, and access to sales channels. Facilitated‐network businesses like Facebook reap their competitive advantage from the size of their network.

Early movers win only when a company can: preserve an early market lead stemming from barriers that later entrants will face; build resources and competencies that larger firms eventually could imitate but which they will prefer to acquire; avoid becoming locked into inappropriate technologies or business models before the market is deeply understood; and avoid incurring large upfront costs.

Once a company defines what new business it wants to be in, it can use this paper to help identify the advantages and drawbacks associated with entering the industry at different times.

In environmental policy first mover advantages for environmental technologies are often taken for granted. It is a popular view to see the state as a political entrepreneur who introduces a certain environmental policy instrument and thus becomes the world market leader or the lead market for the respective technology. Against this background, the purpose of this paper is to find out if the idea of first mover and lead market advantages can be justified by theories and empirical evidence.

A wide range of theoretical and empirical papers from the business management and industrial economics literature were reviewed to provide success factors for different timing‐to‐market and lead market strategies of environmental innovations.

A successful innovator is not necessarily the first but very often one of the early movers within the competition of different innovation designs. The paper shows that the success of a timing strategy depends on country‐specific lead market potentials, on market and technology characteristics and on the regime of the country‐specific regulation. On this basis the paper derives options for environmental innovation strategies for firms under different circumstances of markets, technologies and regulations.

Patent applications, R&D expenditure, etc. are not unimportant input factors for the innovation, but all these supply‐side factors are beyond the focus of this article.

Research on the lead market and the timing to market takes centre stage when product innovations are in the development phase. Companies in countries that do not have sufficient above‐average lead market attributes must target product innovations to fit the preferences of users in the lead market.

This paper is the first to analyse if different timing to market advantages and lead market advantages for environmental innovation can be justified by theories and by empirical evidence.

In addition to pioneering, empirical work on entry order increasingly addresses fast followers and laggards and the potential advantages they are able to capture. There is also a growing consensus in the academia, that current measures of firm performance used in the entry order literature to study these advantages are inadequate. This study analyzes the relationship between entry order and customer evaluations, which, depicting the performance of the firm's products in the market, are used as a proxy for firm performance.

The study is set in the digital camera industry, analyzing entries into each new technology level, in terms of the sensor resolution of compact and bridge cameras. The complete dataset consisted of 1,816 digital camera models introduced between January 1996 and December 2017. The data are analyzed using hierarchical multiple linear regression.

The study finds evidence of early-mover advantage for the compact product category. In the compact camera consumer market, both first-movers and fast followers outperform late movers. Furthermore, the difference in performance in comparison to laggards is greater for first-movers than for fast followers. However, in the bridge category which consists of a more heterogeneous set of products, no significant entry-order effects are detected.

The results clearly indicate that there exists an early mover advantage. Furthermore, the results are not consistent across different product categories within an industry; hence, caution needs to be exercised when analyzing industry dynamics and entry order effects. Finally, our novel conceptualization of firm performance measured as online customer evaluation add new opportunities to investigate firm success

This study aims to explore the effect of chief executive officer education on firms’ action timing and acquisition performance in industry merger waves. In addition, this study investigated the moderating influence of CEO duality and firm cash flow on the relationship between education and entry timing.

Following the methodology for determining merger waves in previous studies, the authors identified 16 industry merger waves of Chinese listed firms from 2008 to 2019. Multiple linear regression was employed to examine the hypotheses.

The results showed that higher CEO education was associated with early participation in merger waves. CEO duality negatively moderated the education-entry timing relation. The effect of CEO education on entry timing was more pronounced when firms had higher cash flow. Moreover, more educated CEOs materially enhanced acquisition performance in merger waves.

Entry timing in industry merger waves has important implications, as early movers establish competitive advantages and achieve higher acquisition performance. However, the managerial characteristics determining entry timing have not received adequate attention. Meanwhile, studies examining the effect of CEO education on acquisitions are limited. This study explored the effect of CEO education on firms’ entry timing and acquisition performance in merger waves, thereby contributing to the literature on merger waves and managerial characteristics. This study’s findings regarding the moderators of the education-entry timing relation enrich the literature on corporate governance and agency theory.

The Chinese market presents numerous challenges to companies from industrialized nations, none of which is as daunting as protecting intellectual property (IP). It is necessary to develop a fresh approach for the US, EU and Japanese governments and companies to take advantage of China's growing domestic market while not exposing their IP to continued losses. This paper seeks to discuss this issue.

The research is based on review of existing literature on IP rights infringements in China, application of theory of sustainable competitive advantage as a prescription to discourage imitation and promote early‐mover advantages, and SWOT analysis of the contrasting US and Japanese IP strategies.

Both US and Japanese IP strategies have advantages and disadvantages, but the question remains who can be the most creative and adaptive in their ultimate goal of preserving their IP rights while prospering in the world's largest marketplace.

Apart from internal use, IP may also be commercialized through a joint venture, outright sales, franchising, or licensing. Using creative but proven methods to protect IP is another way to equalize the playing field. Companies can operate in regions where IP laws are strictly enforced and they should work with, and not against, their counterparts in China.

IP strategies of US and Japan in China provide a number of valuable insights on distinctive approaches used. A prescriptive approach is outlined for companies from the industrialized world to manage their efforts in protecting IP in an emerging market with a vastly different social and economic structure.

This paper aims to answer two research questions: what latecomer advantages and disadvantages they had, and what strategies they employed to utilize the advantages or to surmount the disadvantages.

After reviews of the literatures on latecomers' characteristics and the notable rise of Taiwanese thin‐film transistor liquid crystal display (TFT‐LCD) panel manufacturers in the global manufacturing contexts, this research project combined secondary industrial sector data analysis and individual company case study (AUO Ltd) approaches in order to build a conceptual framework and identify latecomers' (dis)advantages.

This paper advances the existing literature on latecomer advantages and disadvantages by reviewing the spectacular rise of Taiwanese TFT‐LCD panel manufacturers and reveals the importance of some unexplored source of latecomer advantage such as the competition dynamics which is proved to be vital for Taiwanese firms to successfully penetrate into the market. The paper finds the influence of technological regime and argues that the incremental technological advance rather than radical innovation provides latecomers with opportunity to utilize the learning curve effect. It has also discovered new forms of latecomer advantages, for example the free‐rider effect of improved equipment due to suppliers' own learning curve. This paper illustrates the necessity of adequate exploration on technology and product features to understand firms' strategic behaviors. Moreover, the subtle tactics found in this case study may enlighten other latecomers.

The study leaves a number of questions unanswered which warrant more attention. First, the theoretical arguments and experiences from this single case are not easily extendable to the other industries. Broader investigation should be helpful to discover the mechanism between latecomer advantage, strategy and performance. Second, the study of latecomer (dis)advantages and strategies should take the firm features into account to get a whole picture. Third, the examination of interactions between latecomer (dis)advantages and more detailed analytical framework are needed.

Although latecomers' characteristics and strategies have been discussed for many years since Asia economy emerged, TFT‐LCD industry is a relatively new and fast growing industry. How can a latecomer play an important role in emerging industry growing phase? This is novel in contrast with classical latecomer's model in established industry.

This paper aims to present an interview with Professor Ron Adner, author of The Wide Lens.

The paper presents an interview with Professor Ron Adner, author of The Wide Lens to ask about his structured approach to uncovering the hidden sources of dependence in innovation ecosystems that undermine collaboration efforts. Adner describes how to use the tools he has developed to assess, map and analyse innovation ecosystems. Adner explains that when delivering value depends on the combined efforts of multiple innovation partners – both within and across firms – executing brilliantly does not prevent failure if the other partners stumble. Numerous case studies are reported and a new set of analysis tools is introduced.

Adner reveals that success in new product/service ecosystems requires innovation partners that are both able and willing to participate in a novel solution.

The paper notes that seeing innovation as ecosystem management produces many new insights about effective implementation.

Several studies of the telecommunications industry have focused on government regulation and structural conditions, suggesting that initial order of entry and network effects create strong first‐mover advantages for GSM companies. This paper seeks to change the focus to managerial capabilities and to investigate how an early mover on the Turkish market manages the phase of vigorous competition following the early‐regulated period.

The paper is a case study of one leading firm in the context of the Turkish telecommunications market development. The most important sources for data are Telepati Telekom Journal, Turkcell Annual Reports, Telecommunications Authority of Turkey's publications, the reports of investment institutions, web pages of operators, and previous publications about the Turkish telecom industry.

The paper finds that the early mover, Turkcell, has used a mix of differentiated marketing strategies, innovative and diversified product development and increased service quality to defend its position in an era of increased competition with new operators, a high number of pre‐paid customers and number portability.

On the basis of this case, the paper argues that studies of the telecommunications industry need to expand their analyses of industry structures to also include firm‐specific strategies and management capabilities.

Using Amazon.com as a case study, the present research explores first mover (dis)advantages in e.commerce. It examines whether or not Amzon.com has sustained early mover advantages. What are these advantages? And how has Amazon.com reacted to late movers? Evidence generated from the case study suggests that the maintainability of first mover advantages in e.commerce depends on three main factors: continuous innovation, speed of implementation and patenting.

We analyze how entry order in a new field influences the stock market reaction to strategic alliances and acquisitions aimed at expanding firm boundaries. We argue that alliances would be more valued by investors at the early stages of a process of convergence between two markets, whereas acquisitions would be more valued in the later stages. Using a sample of alliances and acquisitions carried out by European telecom firms, our hypotheses have been confirmed.