Having knowledge of your competitors is critical if you want to maintain a competitive advantage. It helps you set your prices competitively, market your products and services in a way that stands out and assess threats. You can use this information to help you win in your industry, no matter what industry you're in.
Internal awareness and understanding of competitors
Internal awareness and understanding of competitors can be achieved in many different ways. For one thing, employees in other parts of the company will have exposure to competitor information through the work they do. They will interact with other people in their industry area and will often hear rumors and gossip about their competitors. Another way to gain insight about your competitors is to talk to former employees of rival companies. These individuals will be able to share insights about the competitors' products, marketing strategies, and working environment.
Self-citations as a sign of competitive advantage
There is a growing concern about the extent to which scientists and scholars are self-citing their own research. This concern arises because researchers use citation-related performance indicators to evaluate their own work and to compete for research support. Researchers may intentionally increase self-citation in an effort to improve their h-index and other research rewards.
The practice is not unethical or unfair, and self-citation doesn't necessarily mean a researcher is better than another. Self-citations only become detrimental when the citation counts are very high. However, the practice has other benefits for the author. First, a higher self-citation count makes an author more visible than his or her counterpart.
It is important to note that self-citations are highly correlated with total citations, publication numbers, and the number of authors in a paper. The highest self-citation rates, which are not related to sample size, were seen in the non-clinical domain. This was particularly true in the basic sciences, specialty journals, and smaller sample studies.
Self-citations are also linked to visibility and relevance. Some scholars view self-citations as an egocentric trait without being egotistical. However, others have defended the practice and described it as a legitimate desire to make work visible and relevant. However, this argument has not been supported by rigorous research.
Furthermore, excessive self-citations may actually be detrimental for the science community. Self-citations may lead to biases in hiring and resource allocation. In addition, the practice may result in perverse effects on research, and increased transparency and accountability will be necessary to counter these perverse effects.
Self-citations can also be counterproductive to fairness and the principles of fair competition. The authors of these articles note that excessive self-citation may actually harm the process of spreading breakthrough ideas. These researchers suggest that excessive self-citation may actually lead to a decrease in the flow of research ideas.
These results are consistent across self-citations and mandated OA. However, authors may hesitate to self-archive preprints that may be questionable. In this case, the OA Advantage remains high despite these effects. Additionally, the authors may be reluctant to post doubtful papers online before they have been peer-reviewed.
Self-citation can take many forms. There are two types of self-citation: diachronous and synchronous. The former requires an author to use a specific name on every citing and cited document, while the latter allows for any author name. This latter type is often referred to as "all-author to all-author self-citation".
Another possible source of self-citations is pressure to publish. Under this pressure, scientists may strategically publish short papers with a higher number of self-citations. Ultimately, this strategy would be counterproductive. Furthermore, scientists may publish significant stories to generate self-citations and amplify their self-citations.
Nevertheless, the inclusion of self-citations from the total citations of a country has a mixed impact on its ranking. The total cites of a country decreased by 14.3% if self-citations were excluded. In addition, Saudi Arabia was negatively affected in terms of its world rankings in three of the 14 specialties studied. The difference was not significant in seven other specialties.
Spillovers from competitor knowledge in patents
Spillovers occur through a number of channels, including publications, patents, technical meetings, conversations with innovative firms' employees, and reverse engineering. This paper contributes to the literature on spillovers by investigating whether disclosed information has an effect on the quality of patents. It also examines the role of main competitor knowledge in the process.
The authors of the article discuss the possible impacts of knowledge spillovers from competitor patents. They find that when two firms compete in the same technological field, their technological distance is close enough to capture competitor knowledge spillovers. In addition, geographical distance does not prevent either firm from absorbing and using rival knowledge. This indicates that the quality of patents can be spurred by leveraging information that is available in patents.
The JTH experiment uses patents with geographic matching. This mimics the geographic distribution of knowledge production. In a large organization, there may be an agglomeration of research activities, resulting in a geographical match of patents. Furthermore, patent classification systems offer channels to select control patents. The basic idea is to pick a patent with a similar application date, technology class, and originating patent.
In addition to the localization effects, knowledge spillovers can also be traced using patent citations analysis. This method helps map the technology-relevant research. Researchers have conducted a study in the journal of data and information science to understand the effects of knowledge spillovers.
The authors also looked at whether backward citations affect the quality of patented technology and patents. This research found that backward citations do have an effect on the quality of patents. But the attributions of backward citations to relevant knowledge are not straightforward. The reason is that the applicants may have included the citation for different reasons. Furthermore, many patent citations are added by the examiner. Therefore, they do not provide a comprehensive picture of the source of the knowledge.
Moreover, the external flow of knowledge has two types: one comes from the main competitor and the other from other sources of technological knowledge. While using competitor's knowledge to develop a new product or process may save time and money, it also puts a rival firm at a disadvantage.
The results also support the hypotheses that the quality of patents is negatively affected by citations to main competitors. For example, when comparing Airbus and Boeing, the latter benefits from Airbus patents, but Boeing does not. Thus, there is a significant effect of citations to the main competitor.
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