Do You See Them Coming? Attention to Nontraditional Competitors

In this paper, we investigate the antecedents of firms’ attention to nontraditional competitors (including outside-industry and entrepreneurial competitors that are not on the immediate radar of the focal firms) and the consequences of such attention for firms’ competitive actions. Extending the attention-based view, we argue that executives’ prior experience and network positions are critical in shaping firms’ attention to nontraditional competitors. Using data collected from the computer and telecommunication industries from 2002–2015, we show that firms with more executives who have significant career variety, are newly appointed from outside, or occupy network brokerage positions are likely to pay attention to nontraditional competitors. We also find that attention to nontraditional competitors and attention to traditional competitors are driven by different factors. In particular, having more broker executives is found to have a positive impact on firms’ attention to nontraditional competitors but a negative impact on firms’ attention to traditional competitors. Our findings suggest an interesting dilemma for firms trying to assemble a top management team to address both traditional and nontraditional competitors.