Fernando F. Suarez

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Northeastern University

The literature on technology management has increasingly focused on the sociocognitive elements of the industry life cycle. One of these elements, category labels (words, in most cases) and its role in shaping market understandings, has recently become of interest to scholars. As industries evolve, stakeholders generate a plethora of category label...

James Utterback’s research has had a major impact on the work of both scholars and practitioners interested in the strategic management of technology and innovation. His pioneering studies with the late William Abernathy produced a powerful yet parsimonious model to understand how industries evolve and how the organizations within an industry must...

Scholars have long studied technology evolution. More recently, organizational theorists have begun to explore the role of categories and their associated labels in industry dynamics. Yet little is known about how technological designs and categories coevolve. We build on these two bodies of literature to develop an integrative model of how industr...

Determining the optimal time for firms to enter emerging industries has long been a key concern in strategy, yet scholars still struggle to create a theoretical foundation that can fully integrate the empirical findings within this area. We incorporate categorical dynamics into the theory of the industry life cycle to complement and enhance the pre...

In this panel symposium, we aim to stimulate a rich discussion between different perspectives of theories of heterogeneity within industries and markets. This heterogeneity has been defined through various terms, such as strategic groups, niches, segments, categories, or submarkets, each focusing on diverse features of the product characteristics s...

A growing body of literature has shown that categorical affiliation affects industry dynamics. However, little is known about what drives the adoption of category labels in emerging industries. Using data from the smartphone industry from 2000 to 2010 we track firms’ adoption of category labels over time. We argue and find support for a trade-off b...

This panel symposium brings together a set of prominent scholars to discuss recent theoretical developments at the intersection of industry evolution and categorical dynamics. Technology scholars have long studied industry evolution and technological designs. More recently, organizational theorists have begun to explore the role of categories in in...

Services of different types have become increasingly important for product firms. While these firms mainly focus on products, managers and researchers lack a comprehensive framework to understand when to make significant investments in particular kinds of services. We identify three categories of product-related services from a product firm – smoot...

Services of different types have become increasingly important for product firms. While these firms mainly focus on products, managers and researchers lack a comprehensive framework to understand when to make significant investments in particular kinds of services. We identify three categories of product-related services from a product firm – smoot...

What’s in a name? Although Shakespeare claimed that a rose “by any other name would smell as sweet,” over the last five to ten years, significant research on category labels has shown the opposite to be true. This research finds that a company’s labeling strategy can have important performance implications for products in nascent markets. As part o...

We argue that, despite significant progress, the extant entry timing literature still suffers from several shortcomings and, in particular, it fails to integrate into a coherent and integrative framework the latest findings from contiguous management literature streams. We propose that entry timing literature can be significantly enriched and its p...

Some product firms increasingly rely on service revenues as part of their business models. One possible explanation is that they turn to services to generate additional profits when their product industries mature and product revenues and profits decline. We explore this assumption by examining the role of services in the financial performance of f...

Increasing numbers of companies big and small, whether providing hardware devices, traditional software or software in the cloud, are attempting to become platform masters by releasing application programming interfaces that allow others to build software and hardware products or complementary services on top of their technology offerings. Platform...

This study incorporates recent research on categorization into theories of industry life cycles and first mover advantages to propose a novel way of explaining key dynamics of early industries. We specify how categorical dynamics impact industry evolution. In particular, we propose that an important event during the emergence of an early industry i...

A firm may readily subscribe to a new technology but then fail to use it. This article advances existing technology diffusion theory by bringing in a new construct that can explain the likelihood of technology use after adoption. The authors define contiguous user bandwagon and show how this information diffusion mechanism can help in explaining th...

Some product firms increasingly rely on service revenues as part of their business models. One possible explanation is that they turn to services to generate additional profits when their product industries mature and product revenues and profits decline. We explore this assumption by examining the role of services in the financial performance of f...

In this article the authors answer a critique, published elsewhere in the magazine, of their article "The Role of Environmental Dynamics in Building a First Mover Advantage Theory." They claim that the criticism of their business theory was not valid on the grounds that the critics did not have a firm grasp of the business literature and concepts o...

We advance first mover advantage (FMA) theory by examining how the pace of market evolution and technology evolution potentially enables or disables FMA. Integrating several streams of literature, we elaborate on the interplay among these two environmental (macro) conditions and the "isolating mechanisms" that underpin FMA. We model these dynamics...

This article lays out several hypotheses to establish a specific link between structural economic reforms and the competitive environment of firms. We test our hypotheses on data from the steel industry in three post-reform economies. We find that economic reforms tend to have a positive effect on environmental munificence, but they also produce sh...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 1992. Title as it appears in the M.I.T. Graduate List, June 1992: An international study on the assembly of printed circuit boards. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 227-234). by Fernando F. Suarez. Ph.D.

This paper extends the theory of network effects by moving beyond the traditional treatment of the installed base of a technology as composed of "N" identical users, each having the same effect on the rest of the users. Borrowing from social network theory, I propose the concept of strong-ties network effects as a key determinant of technology adop...

Many executives take for granted that the first company in a new product category gets an unbeatable head start and reaps long-lasting benefits. But that doesn't always happen. The authors of this article discovered that much depends on the pace at which the category's technology is changing and the speed at which the market is evolving. By analyzi...

Focusing on the special case of changes triggered by profound economic reforms in emerging economies, we suggest a new perspective from which to explore the relationship between environmental and organizational change. This research setting is used to explore and propose enhancements to existing theory that take into account how organizations respo...

Los directivos de prácticamente todas las empresas sostienen, casi sin excepciones, que ser el primero en entrar en un nuevo sector o en una nueva categoría de productos otorga a cualquier empresa una ventaja prácticamente imposible de superar. Sin embargo, por cada estudio académico que demuestra las ventajas de ser el primero en ofrecer un produc...

This paper proposes an integrative framework for understanding the process by which a technology achieves dominance when “battling” against other technological designs. We focus on describing the different stages of a dominance battle and propose five battle milestones that in turn define five key phases in the process. We review the literature fro...

Over the last decade, Latin American economies and companies have witnessed substantial changes as their economies have been reformed and opened to world markets. Firms that have adapted to these changes may have useful lessons to offer to companies in other countries as they face economic transformation and expanding competition.

Technology strategy variables tend to predominate as predictors of survival in the fast-changing rigid disk drive industry. Building on these previous studies, we here test the hypothesis that the technological and market strategies of a new entrant are highly interrelated and that their joint effect plays an important role in a firm's probability...

Technology strategy variables tend to predominate as predictors of survival in the fast-changing rigid disk drive industry. Building on these previous studies, we here test the hypothesis that the technological and market strategies of a new entrant are highly interrelated and that their joint effect plays an important role in a firm's probability...

The economic, population ecology and strategic perspectives on firm survival are here complemented by viewing the same phenomenon from the viewpoint of technology evolution as well. The hypothesis tested is that the competitive environment of an industry, and therefore the survival of firms in it, is substantially affected by the evolution of the t...

Why some firms die while others survive? Survival has long been recognized as a basic goal for a manufacturing firm. At least in the long term, survival should be related to various measures of performance, such as market share and profitability. Advocates of population ecology have argued that life chances of organizations are affected by populati...

"December 1992, Revised July 1993." Includes bibliographical references (p. 45-52). Supported by the International Center for Research on the Management of Technology at the MIT School of Management. James M. Utterback, Fernando F. Suárez.

This paper addresses the empirical verification of hypotheses that relate to the strategic use and implementation of manufacturing flexibility. We begin with a literature review and framework for analyzing different types of flexibility in manufacturing. Next, we examine some of the propositions in the framework using data from 31 printed circuit-b...

"April 1991, Revised June 1991." Includes bibliographical references (p. 31-34). Fernando F. Suárez, James M. Utterback.

El presente artículo describe un proceso de transformación que las empresas exitosas del mundo occidental han experimentado — consciente o inconscientemente— durante este siglo, desde empre-sas rígidas y estructuradas a empresas flexibles e innovadoras. El nuevo paradigma dominante en administración de empresas, llama-do aquí la empresa flexible o...