WHERE DO RESOURCES COME FROM? THE ROLE OF IDIOSYNCRATIC SITUATIONS.

In this paper, we examine the emergence of resources. Our analysis of technological capability acquisition by global U.S.-based chemical firms shows that the emergence of resources is inherently evolutionary We find that path-creating search that generates resource heterogeneity is a response to idiosyncratic situations faced by firms in their local searches. Two such idiosyncratic situations--technology exhaustion and expansion beyond national markets--trigger firms in our sample to create unique innovation search paths. We also find that along a given path firms experiment in order to find the correct investment--in fact, some organizations seem to take a step backward for two steps forward--further demonstrating the evolutionary nature of the resource creation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]