A Fuzzy Growth Options Approach under Competition Threat

Abstract

Information Communication Technology (ICT) projects may contain “wait and see” components, which give ICT managers the option to defer decisions until some uncertainty is resolved. In this paper, we treat these ICT opportunities as Real Options (RO) and assume that there is competition threat that can influence negatively or even worst eliminate their values. We consider exogenous competition modeling assuming that competitors are entering randomly into the market and cause a degradation of the available to the firm of interest overall market value. We introduce fuzzy logic and combine it with ROs under competition threat. The theory developed implicitly contains not only the deferral flexibility of projects but also the possibility of considering vague information, which needs to be taken into account when (long-time range) financial decisions are made. Our proposed model is applied to a real life broadband technology business activity associated with “Egnatia Odos S.A.” strategic decision to deploy optical fiber backbone network along the national motorway “Egnatia Odos.” The results of our model prove that FROs analysis may increase the overall value of the ICT business activity despite competition threat.