TY  - JOUR
AU  - Arora,Ashish
AU  - Nandkumar,Anand
TI  - Securing Their Future? Entry And Survival In The Information Security Industry
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 13634
PY  - 2007
Y2  - November 2007
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13634
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13634.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Ashish Arora
Heinz School, Carnegie Mellon University
2508 Hamburgh Hall
5000 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh PA  15213
Tel: 412-268-2191
Fax: 412-268-5161
E-Mail: ashish@andrew.cmu.edu

Anand Nandkumar
Heinz School
Carnegie Mellon University
2501 Hamburgh Hall
5000 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh PA 15213
E-Mail: anandn@andrew.cmu.edu
M3  - presented at "Entrepreneurship: Strategy and Structure Conf.", September 13-15, 2007
AB  - In this paper we study how the existence of a functioning market for technology differentially conditions the entry strategy and survival of different types of entrants, and the role of scale, marketing ability and technical assets.  Markets for technology facilitate entry of firms that lack proprietary technology and increase vertical specialization.  However, they also increase the relative advantage of downstream capabilities, which is reflected in the relatively improved performance of incumbent Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) firms compared to startups. We find that diversifying entrants perform better relative to startups. Contrary to earlier studies, we find that spin-offs do not perform any better than other startups. Moreover, firms founded by serious hobbyists and tinkerers, whom we call hackers, perform markedly better than other startups. These findings reflect the non-manufacturing setting of this study, as well as the distinctive nature of software technology.
ER  -