Do you back me up? The Power of ‘collective knowledge’ assets in standards competition

Abstract

This paper empirically develops a theory framework of competition as imagination of collective knowledge. While we find that purposes of dynamic stability in technological change encourage competitors’ collaboration for that knowledge, conflicts lead to exclusive backing words. Such words convey power; they isolate a former partner, now rival, from the previously shared knowledge repository. Our research draws from rich event series data and reconstructs the structure of power behind the words via dynamic social network analysis. The paper’s topic refers to the cognitive perspective of technological change but also to standards-related innovation consortia studies in contemporary contexts of ecosystem standard wars or collaborative R&D. Finally, the framework equips future research with a terminology in order to explore shared meanings and shared power, collective knowledge and club goods of opponents in competition and standard setting.