LITMIR.BIZ

       Preface

      In many ways, this book started at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor during the fall of 1993. Separately, we were studying how firms sometimes survive and adjust within dynamic environments, particularly how firms use acquisitions, alliances, and other mechanisms to acquire and recombine strategic resources. Our first encounter and subsequent joint work led to two decades of close friendship between our families and to collaborative research and teaching on how firms compete and survive by developing sound resource-selection and resource-management strategies.

      This book derives most directly from research we have done over the past decade—building on our earlier projects—into how firms “build, borrow, or buy” the resources they need to compete successfully and, specifically, how they choose from among the several sourcing options available to them. In the course of that research, we have been privileged to gain access to executives at some of the world’s great businesses, across many industries and geographies. We are enormously grateful for the executives’ willingness to share with us their experiences, good and bad. Their candor was inspiring, and their insights were indispensable to our progress. Their stories are peppered throughout the book.

      We also have benefited greatly from the thinking and writings of colleagues and other scholars, who have provided key insights within the broad realm of evolutionary and ecological theories, dynamic capabilities, and interfirm exchange. We are particularly grateful for inspiration from Rajshree Agarwal, Erin Anderson, Ashish Arora, Jay Barney, Glenn Carroll, Wes Cohen, Karel Cool, Michael Cusumano, Yves Doz, Kathleen Eisenhardt, John Freeman, Alfonso Gambardella, Philippe Haspeslagh, Bruce Kogut, Dan Levinthal, Marvin Lieberman, Phanish Puranam, Brian Silverman, Harbir Singh, David Teece, Michael Tushman, Oliver Williamson, Sidney Winter, and Maurizio Zollo.

      Over the years, we have been fortunate to work on papers, articles, and case studies with talented coauthors who have helped us develop and deepen our thinking on firms’ build-borrow-buy strategies. They include Gautam Ahuja, Jay Anand, Asli Arikan, Joel Baum, Rich Bettis, Fares Boulos, Nir Brueller, Olivier Chatain, Pierre Dussauge, Bernard Garrette, Mauro Guillén, Connie Helfat, Rebecca Henderson, Glenn Hoetker, John Hulland, Jung-Chin Shen, Kevin Kaiser, Samina Karim, Ishtiaq Mahmood, Xavier Martin, Anita McGahan, Louis Mulotte, Anuradha Nagarajan, Joanne Oxley, Anne Parmigiani, Urs Peyer, Nathalie Pistre, Karen Schnatterly, Myles Shaver, Kulwant Singh, Anand Swaminathan, Bart Vanneste, and Charles Williams. Their work, as well as other colleagues’ work, is referenced in the appendices of this book.

      We are equally grateful for all that we have learned from our students—in the various MBA, executive MBA, executive education, health management, and PhD programs at schools where we have taught and

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