Title
Product innovation with partial capacity rollover
Abstract
This paper analyzes how the transferability of production capacities from an established to a new product influences the incentives of a firm to invest in R&D. A dynamic duopoly model is considered, where initially both firms offer a homogeneous product. The firms invest in production capacities and simultaneously in R&D which determines their innovation rate. The firm that innovates first extends its product line and obtains a patent for the new product that prevents the other firm from catching up. Upon the launch of the new product, the innovator then has the option to transfer part of the capacity for the established product to the production process of the new product. If capacities can be rolled over to the new product, a trade-off can be detected in that this rollover option gives the larger firm more incentive to innovate, whereas the cannibalization effect gives the smaller firm a higher innovation incentive. As a logical consequence we find that the larger firm is expected to innovate first when the capacity transfer does not involve a too high capacity loss. However, if the losses of capacity transfer are considerable, the cannibalization effect starts to dominate and the smaller firm’s incentive to innovate is larger.
Year
DOI
Venue
2020
10.1007/s10100-019-00648-7
Central European Journal of Operations Research
Keywords
DocType
Volume
Dynamic duopoly, Product innovation, Capital accumulation, Differential games, Markov perfect equilibrium, Capacity rollover
Journal
28
Issue
ISSN
Citations 
2
1435-246X
0
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.34
0
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Herbert Dawid18221.40
Michael Kopel2133.28
Peter M. Kort320544.47