Innovating firms’ strategic signaling along the innovation life cycle: The standards war context

Firms that develop market-focused technological innovations regularly employ strategic signals to influence market participants’ perceptions of the uncertainties that pervade innovation-based competition. Focusing on the standards war context, we argue that an innovation’s technical, market and standards uncertainties will vary as the innovation evolves through its life cycle, influencing innovating firms’ strategic signaling behaviors and, hence, the impacts of these signals on market participants’ perceptions of these firms’ likelihood of innovation success. We also examine how such influences vary depending on innovating firms’ strategic positions during different phases of the innovation life cycle. Our insights are developed into testable propositions.