Prior research has studied the effectiveness of parallel projects in the research and development stages. However, it has ignored predevelopment, which R&D intensive firms generally distinguish as a separate stage lodged between research and development. Predevelopment focuses on activities and decisions to select, from a subset of related technologies, the best option for a product application. Parallel projects are often a means of speeding up this process by actively pursuing learning spillovers. This paper develops assumptions about learning potential and then uses a real option model to test the trade-off between the higher costs and benefits of this parallel project approach. We compare outcomes for predevelopment using the same approach under research and development conditions, respectively. The results reveal that, when moving from research to development, the effectiveness of pursuing competing technologies in parallel projects first increases and then decreases, with a maximum positive result in predevelopment. The results also show that learning spillovers can compensate for the higher investment costs. Data from an empirical case support our findings.

中文翻译：

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探索在预开发期间在并行项目中追求竞争技术的有效性

先前的研究已经研究了并行项目在研发阶段的有效性。但是，它忽略了开发前阶段，研发密集型公司通常将其视为研发之间的一个单独阶段。预开发专注于活动和决策，以从相关技术的子集中选择产品应用的最佳选择。并行项目通常是通过积极追求学习溢出来加快此过程的一种方法。本文提出了关于学习潜力的假设，然后使用实物期权模型来测试这种并行项目方法的较高成本与收益之间的权衡。我们分别在研究和开发条件下使用相同的方法比较预开发的结果。结果表明，当从研究转向开发时，在并行项目中追求竞争技术的效率首先增加，然后下降，这对预开发产生了最大的积极影响。结果还表明，学习溢出可以弥补较高的投资成本。来自经验案例的数据支持了我们的发现。