Decision Structure and Performance of Networked Technology Supply Chains

Supply chains in key growth industries increasingly commercialize a critical piece of technology invented by an upstream technology supplier. The focal technology is licensed to specialist design firms and designed into products, which are fabricated by dedicated large-scale manufacturers. We examine a technology supplier’s licensing decision in such emerging multiparty networked supply chains in which a downstream design firm’s capability may not be publicly known. We find that the supply chain and firm profits are critically affected by whether or not a license agreement between a technology supplier and a design firm is kept confidential from a manufacturer. Instead of licensing to two downstream firms, a technology supplier may also license to an integrated firm with both design and manufacturing capabilities, which forms a conventional vertical supply chain. We compare a networked supply chain with a vertical supply chain and show that the network model can, under some conditions, outperform the integrated configuration and increase profits for all supply chain entities. In particular, a downstream firm can be better off decentralized, with design and manufacturing functions taken by different firms. Our research helps explain the emergence of such networked supply chains and offers insights on how to structure them to improve outcomes. The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/msom.2017.0619 .