Title: Interfirm Connectivity and Value Appropriation: Empirical Evidence

Speaker: Xinyuan Zhang, Ph.D. Candidate, The National University of Singapore

Host: Xie Luqun, Associate Professor, Antai College of Economics and Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Time: 10:00–11:30, Friday, November 20, 2026

Venue: Room A303, Pao Sui Loong Library, Antai College of Economics and Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Brief introduction of the content: 

How does interfirm connectivity shape the way that business ventures appropriate value from their inventions? To profit from what they invent, ventures typically rely on complementary assets held outside their boundaries. Benefiting from such assets, however, depends not only on their availability outside the venture but also on how easily they can be accessed through interfirm relationships. We argue that improved connectivity between ventures and their venture capital (VC) investors makes investor complementary assets easier to access, thereby facilitating ventures’ cumulative use of existing inventions while relaxing the very constraints that can make external monetization particularly valuable. To test our arguments, we leverage the staggered introduction of high-speed rail in China as a plausibly exogenous source of improvement in interfirm connectivity between ventures and VC investors. A difference-in-differences analysis supports our predictions, and the results remain robust when triangulated across multiple estimation approaches. Further investigation points to capital and knowledge as two important complementary resources underlying these effects. Our study advances appropriability research by identifying the accessibility of complementary assets as an important determinant shaping value appropriation strategies.

Speaker's profile:

Xinyuan Zhang is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Strategy and Policy at the National University of Singapore. Her research examines how firms strategically respond to shifting stakeholder and institutional environments, with a focus on innovation management and sustainability. Her work has received the 2026 Best Doctoral Student Paper Award from the Behavioral Strategy Interest Group of the Strategic Management Society (SMS), as well as a nomination for the 2026 SMS Responsible Research Paper Award. She is also a recipient of the 2026 Kwok Leung Memorial Dissertation Fund Award from the International Association for Chinese Management Research (IACMR).

Welcome all!