What Networks Do To Companies And What Companies Do To Networks

This paper explores the question of how alliance portfolios change over time. In the setting of the U.S. wireless gaming market, the author collected real-time and longitudinal data on entrepreneurial game publishers over a period of two-and-a-half years. This process revealed that companies' alliance portfolios can grow or deteriorate rapidly through virtuous or vicious cycles depending on their starting position in a networked market. Those companies in a virtuous cycle have the additional advantage that they can use resource-dependence strategies to fuel the virtuous cycle further. Overall, the picture provided is one that advocates multi-level and longitudinal analysis for the understanding of company, portfolio, and network-level outcomes deriving from company-level interactions and portfolio strategies.