Kingpins, Bottlenecks, and Value Dynamics Along a Sector

The Research and Materials Development Fund at the London Business School is acknowledged for financial support. Carliss Baldwin is credited for helping this project take shape and codeveloping the first version of the database. She also greatly contributed with detailed comments as this paper developed. The authors also acknowledge feedback and valuable suggestions by Ron Adner, Julian Birkinshaw, Bruce Hardie, Thorbjorn Knusden, Dan Levinthal, Phanish Puranam, Freek Vermeulen, Claudio Wolter, and Sid Winter, as well as from seminar participants at the University of Southern Denmark Odense, Stern School of Business, and London Business School, and conference participants at the 2012 Academy of Management meeting and the Wharton Technology Mini-conference. Mary Tripsas and three anonymous reviewers substantially helped improve and streamline this paper, and Tom Albrighton helped make it more concise. All errors remain the authors’ own.