(p. 217)-Large and hierarchical firms disaggregate in order to:
A. lengthen new product development cycles.
B. prevent large-scale downsizing.
C. become more responsive to technological changes.
D. curb the entrepreneurial culture within them.
(p. 304)-Which of the following statements is true of innovators and early adopters?
A. They are unwilling to take risks and to pay high prices.
B. They may demand considerable customization and technical support.
C. They are more likely to respond to marketing that communicates the product’s
completeness.
D. For this market segment, detailed technical information is not as important as using
market channels with high reach and high credibility.
(p. 93)-Marine Systems was the first company to develop an inventory management
software specifically for hotels and restaurants. Soon after Marine Systems launched its
product, Unicorn Systems developed a similar software. The software developed by
Unicorn Systems outperformed the one developed by Marine Systems, and it eventually
became the market leader. In this scenario, Unicorn Systems is an example of a(n)
_____.
A. first pioneer
B. late mover
C. early follower
D. eccentric laggard
(p. 188)-Tacit knowledge is best defined as the knowledge that:
A. cannot be readily codified or transferred in written form.
B. cannot be patented.
C. has a very low degree of appropriability.
D. is not eligible for copyright protection.
(p. 138)-In the context of qualitative methods for choosing projects, screening questions
are used mainly to:
A. increase the rate of employee attrition.
B. structure the discussion about project details like potential costs and benefits.
C. increase employee turnover rates.
D. -choose the best consulting firm to analyze a potential project.
(p. 214)-As a firm grows bigger, it becomes:
A. more effective in monitoring and motivating employees.
B. less vulnerable to bureaucratic inertia.
C. less efficient in R&D due to loss of managerial control.
D. increasingly easy for individual scientists to appropriate the returns of their efforts.
(p. 114)-Perfecto Espresso Corp. is a chain of coffee shops in the United States. Earlier
it used to source its coffee from several coffee suppliers. However, recently it started its
own coffee plantation to supply its coffee shops. This is an example of:
A. forward vertical integration.
B. backward vertical integration.
C. horizontal integration.
D. substitution.
(p. 2-3)-The Solow Residual refers to the:
A. obsolete products left in a market due to accelerated product life cycles.
B. less developed nations of the world being left behind due to their obsolete
technology.
C. increased amount of output achievable from a given quantity of labor and capital due
to technological innovation.
D. process of dumping goods in developing and underdeveloped countries at a price
lower than the home-market price.
(p. 52)-Which of the following statements is true of s-curves in technological
improvement?
A. They are obtained by plotting the cumulative number of adopters of the technology
against time.
B. They typically show that technology goes through initial accelerated improvement,
then diminishing improvement, then slow improvement.
C. S-curves in technology diffusion and s-curves in technology performance are
fundamentally the same process.
D. The s-curves flatten when the cost of each marginal improvement increases and
diminishing returns to effort begin to set in.
(p. 295)-A(n) _____ price strategy is a short-run strategy that prices goods to cover
variable costs and some fixed costs, and it is used by firms in industries plagued with
intense price competition.
A. market skimming
B. penetration
C. survival
D. economy
(p. 118)-Socially complex resources are:
A. resources or activities that emerge through the interaction of multiple individuals.
B. resources that cannot be defined in terms of a numerical value.
C. resources that require public sanction in order to be utilized for profit-making
purposes.
D. resources that are shared by different parties thereby making them easily imitable.
(p. 242)-Trekker Inc. has developed a product with a very short product development
cycle. Which of the following can it typically expect?
A. The product’s sales will be slow as consumers would already be committed to other
products.
B. It will be able to provide complementary goods to enhance the attractiveness of its
product.
C. It will be unable to fully amortize the fixed costs of development before the product
becomes obsolete.
D. It will not be able to upgrade its product.
(p. 80)-When users are comparing the value of a new technology to an existing
technology, they are said to be using objective information when the comparison is
based on:
A. anticipated technological benefits.
B. future prediction regarding the availability of complementary goods.
C. perceived installed base.
D. actual technological benefits.
(p. 145)-In the _____ method, in order to establish scales of customer preferences,
individuals in a group are each given a stack of cards with an object or idea on each
card.
A. derivative
B. conceptual
C. DEA
D. -Q-sort
(p. 5)-Walter is the new director of R&D at Good Health Inc., a pharmaceutical
company. Which of the following statements, if made by Walter, would indicate that he
believes in the concept of the innovation funnel?
A. “Innovation is a freewheeling process that is unconstrained by rules and plans.”
B. “While there are many potential new product ideas going in the wide end, very few
make it through the development process.”
C. “I believe that Good Health should limit new idea generation to save time and other
resources.”
D. “I believe that Good Health should allow all new ideas generated in the company to
make it to the development process.”
(p. 171)-Which of the following collaborative arrangements is the most appropriate
when firms place great importance on access to other firms’ competencies?
A. Licensing in
B. Joint venture
C. Licensing out
D. Sole internal development
(p. 163)-Which of the following is an advantage of collaborating at the development
stage of a technology?
A. It increases asset commitment to obsolete products.
B. It ensures cooperation in the commercialization stage.
C. It increases a product’s cycle time.
D. It facilitates the emergence of multiple competing standards for a product.
(p. 94-95)-Which of the following statements is true of first movers in comparison with
early followers and late entrants?
A. Cost of developing necessary production processes and complementary goods is
lower for first movers.
B. First movers are in a better position to exploit buyer switching costs and also to reap
increasing returns advantages.
C. First movers, being incumbents, have greater ability than later entrants to respond to
changes in the industry environment and adopt newer production processes.
D. First movers fail to capture scarce resources such as key locations, government
permits, access to distribution channels, and relationships with suppliers.
(p. 72)-Firms that develop new technologies ahead of others often try a number of
unsuccessful techniques before finding a solution that works well. This
experimentation:
A. lowers the firm’s ability to recognize the value of new information.
B. lowers the firm’s ability to develop and enhance technologies.
C. makes it difficult for the firm to develop related technologies.
D. enables the firm to find related solutions and alternatives that work well.
(p. 177)-When each partner of an alliance contributes capital and owns a specified right
to a percentage of the proceeds from the alliance, the collaborative relationship is
referred to as _____.
A. equity ownership
B. relational governance
C. alliance contracts
D. solo internal development
(p. 61)-Once a new product design becomes a dominant design:
A. the product is no longer profitable.
B. it becomes difficult for competitors to imitate.
C. the architecture on which the industry can focus its efforts is destabilized.
D. the product design is adopted by the majority of producers.
(p. 248)-Customers who face the same general needs of the marketplace but are likely
to experience them months or years earlier than the rest of the market and stand to
benefit disproportionately from solutions to those needs are referred to as _____.
A. laggards
B. intrapreneurs
C. early followers
D. lead users
(p. 188)-Sandy lives in a country that is a member of the Madrid Union. She has
registered her trademark within her country. Her trademark is now protected:
A. throughout the world.
B. only in the countries that Sandy chooses among the members of the Madrid Union.
C. only in her own country.
D. only in the countries where products with the trademark are manufactured.
(p. 27)-Breaking Ventures Inc. realized that most parents are worried about their
teenage children going out on their own. Based on this information, the company
developed a device that could be fixed into teenagers’ cell phones, and it helped parents
keep track of their children’s location. This approach to research and development is
referred to as _____.
A. demand-pull
B. supply-push
C. science-push
D. research-pull
(p. 298)-Gemini Car Inc. buys car components from various manufacturers and
assembles them into cars, which it sells under its own brand name. From the given
information, Gemini Car is most accurately an example of a(n):
A. pirate operator.
B. original equipment manufacturer.
C. disintermediation factor.
D. category captain.
(p. 222)-According to Schoonhoven and Jelinek, quasiformal structures are:
A. slow to respond to the need for changes.
B. most useful in fostering interactions based on hierarchy.
C. less problem-focused than other structures of companies.
D. not part of the formal reporting structure.
(p. 300)-BioMark Lifesystems Inc. wanted to enhance the adoption of its new
diagnostic substances by medical laboratories. It made an agreement with the dominant
producer of syringes and test tubes to have its diagnostic substances sold to laboratories
in a package along with the syringes and tubes. Such an arrangement is known as:
A. sponsorship.
B. product modularity.
C. a bundling relationship.
D. disintermediation.
(p. 118)-The relationship between a _____ resource and the outcome it produces is
poorly understood.
A. socially complex
B. causally ambiguous
C. logistically outbound
D. logistically inbound
(p. 268)-Karen’s supervisor, while discussing about her participation in a new product
development team, tells her that she has been engaging in social loafing. This means
that Karen:
A. has been involved in whistle-blowing activities.
B. has been discriminating against colleagues belonging to minority groups.
C. has not been putting much effort into the team’s work.
D. has stolen office property.
(p. 228)-In a locally leveraged strategy to innovation, the R&D divisions _____.
A. are completely centralized
B. play different roles in the company’s overall R&D strategy
C. work on the full scope of development activities relevant to their business unit
D. do not share creative resources and innovative developments
(p. 3)-_____ refer to the costs (or benefits) of technological innovations that are borne
by individuals other than those responsible for creating them.
A. Externalities
B. Innovation funnels
C. Opportunity costs
D. Cultural lags
(p. 266-267)-Which of the following statements is true of the autonomous team
structure?
A. In autonomous teams, individuals may spend less than 10 percent of their time
working on team-related activities.
B. In autonomous teams, the potential for conflict between team and functions is very
low.
C. In autonomous teams, team members are collocated with a senior project manager.
D. The project manager of an autonomous team is not given full control over resources.
(p. 245)-Josh is the executive vice president of a bank. The president of the bank has
recently asked Josh to use his influence to ensure that the bank’s online banking project
is developed and implemented. Paul has been asked to be a(n):
A. devil’s advocate.
B. project champion.
C. entrepreneur.
D. mentor.
(p. 177)-Self-enforcing norms based on goodwill, trust, and reputation of the partners is
known as _____.
A. capability complement
B. alliance contract
C. equity ownership
D. relational governance
(p. 54-55)-Which of the following statements is true of technology diffusion?
A. S-curves in technology diffusion are obtained by plotting performance against time.
B. Technology diffusion is much faster than information diffusion.
C. A drop in the price of a new technology can accelerate technology diffusion.
D. Adoption is initially fast when a new technology is introduced to the market.
