California Management Review
California Management Review is a premier academic management journal published at UC Berkeley
by Jialei Yang, Henry Chesbrough, and Pia Hurmelinna-Laukkanen
Image Credit | Wikimedia
Artificial intelligence increasingly attracts attention and investments. However, appropriating value from this general-purpose technology (GPT) can be difficult. To understand these challenges, this article analyzes why IBM failed to generate significant profits from IBM Watson Health despite its promising starting points. The findings suggest that, considering the characteristics of GPT, an overly closed approach for taking it to market contributed to the failure. Furthermore, conditions such as the immaturity and the complexity of the application field intensified the challenges. This study suggests that using a strong appropriability regime in open innovation can enhance the appropriation of value from a GPT.
