Professor Riitta Katila is recognized the world over for her work on innovation, competition, and growth strategies of firms. In her talk, she shared findings of her current research, which examines the relationship between the U.S. Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft, value creation, and value capture among infrastructure software firms, as well as Microsoft itself. The project is a joint venture with Professor Sruthi Thatchenkery of the UCL School of Management.
Antitrust Enforcement Against a Dominant Platform and Complementor Value Creation and Capture: The Wild, Wild West?
Joint work with Sruthi Thatchenkery
We analyze the relation between regulatory intervention against a dominant technology platform and complementor performance. Using a new, hand-collected dataset on enterprise infrastructure software firms from 1998-2004, we examine the relationship between the U.S. Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft (a dominant enterprise platform owner) and value creation and value capture among infrastructure software firms (complementors) and Microsoft itself. The data show that citation-weighted patents by complementors is increased following the antitrust settlement but profitability is reduced. The findings suggest a social benefit to antitrust enforcement in the form of increased innovation but caution that disrupting the order of an industry may lead to losses in efficiency.
Riitta Katila is Professor of Management Science & Engineering and W.M. Keck Foundation Faculty Scholar at Stanford University, and research director of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. Her research is in the intersection of technology strategy and organizational learning, using machine learning, statistical analysis and mixed methods. She is an expert on innovation, competition, and entrepreneurship in large firms, and her current research centers on responsible and inclusive innovation initiatives.
Prof. Katila’s research has received several international awards. She is Alfred P. Sloan Industry Studies Fellow and winner of the Schendel Prize by the Strategic Management Society. She was also recognized as the Top Young Strategy Scholar by the Strategic Management Society (SMS), an award that recognizes “exemplary scholarship that promises to have an impact on future strategic management practice…and will make fundamental contributions to the way we think about knowledge essential to achieving durable organizational success.”
She received the Stephan M. Schrader Award for Outstanding Research in Technology and Innovation Management, the Thought Leader Award in Entrepreneurship, and the Best Symposium Award by the Organization and Management Theory Division of the Academy of Management. Her dissertation on industrial robotics firms and their innovation strategies using patents and new products received several recognitions, including the Best Dissertation Award from The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences and was also recognized for its excellence by the Business Policy and Strategy (now STR) Division of the Academy of Management. Katila has served on the editorial review boards of Administrative Science Quarterly, Organization Science, Strategic Organization and the Strategic Management Journal, is the Program Director for Strategic Management Society’s Research in Organizations RiO program, and was recently the Chair of the Technology and Innovation Management Division of the Academy of Management.
Katila studied engineering economics and information systems as an undergraduate, earned a Ph.D. in technology strategy at UT Austin on a Fulbright Scholarship, and received a Doctorate in Engineering from Helsinki University of Technology in Finland. In between, she worked at a management consultancy and in telecommunications. She is the recipient of the Eugene L. Grant Faculty Teaching Award at Stanford, and was honored by Aalto University’s School of Science (former Helsinki University of Technology) as the Alumnus of the Year.
