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Decision Structure and Performance of Networked Technology Supply Chains

Supply chains in many industries increasingly entail commercialization of a critical piece of technology developed by an upstream technology supplier. The focal technology is licensed to specialist design firms and designed into products, which are fabricated by specialist manufacturers. Characterizing decisions taken by the technology, design, and manufacturing firms and their implications for supply chain profits form the focus of this paper. We examine the technology-supplier's licensing decision in such emerging networked supply chain settings where the capability of a design firm is not publicly known. We find that the supply chain and firm profits are critically impacted by the market's technology sensitivity and whether or not the license agreement between the technology and design firms is kept confidential from the manufacturer. We analyze when the design firm finds it incentive-compatible to ensure confidentiality, and compare outcomes of a networked supply chain with an integrated supply-chain where the technology supplier licenses to a single integrated design-manufacturer. We show that the networked model can outperform the integrated configuration and conditionally produce gains for all supply chain entities. Our groundbreaking modeling, analysis, and results help explain the emergence of such networked supply chains and offer prescriptions for structuring them for superior outcomes.