In the rapidly evolving environment of modern business, the digitization of economic activity and the ubiquitous integration of technology across industries are fundamentally altering how companies develop and implement strategy. The rise of digital technologies has not only intensified competition but has also opened new opportunities for collaboration, even among firms that may be direct competitors in certain markets. This shift is particularly pronounced in technology-focused industries, where the pace of innovation and the complexity of the technologies involved compel extending traditional strategic frameworks. This module note presents a framework that identifies five factors firms should consider when drawing the line between competition and collaboration on a given technology: 1) whether the market is winner-take-all, 2) the location in the technology life cycle (S-curve), 3) the location in the technology stack, 4) the level of industry competition, and 5) the level of social acceptance (including regulatory uncertainty) towards the technology.

In early 2023, the smart home industry stood at a pivotal juncture. The recent launch of "Matter" version 1.0, an ambitious interoperability standard developed by the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA), promised to unify a fragmented market plagued by incompatible devices and platforms. This new standard aimed to ensure that smart home products from different manufacturers could seamlessly communicate with each other, offering consumers a more integrated and user-friendly experience. Amidst this backdrop, Amazon, a major force in the smart home arena with its Alexa ecosystem and ownership of Ring, a leading smart home security brand, faced a strategic decision that could shape the future of smart homes. The crux of Amazon's dilemma revolved around the next iteration of the Matter standard-version 2.0. The potential inclusion of security camera compatibility in Matter version 2.0 presented both a significant opportunity and a substantial challenge. Amazon needed to decide whether to commit considerable internal resources to ensure that the next version of Matter supported security cameras, or to avoid committing these resources and keep the Ring security camera incompatible with the Matter standard.

The case describes the history of AGENTS.inc. Despite being a small startup, with only four employees, that had never had a funding round, the company boasted an impressive client portfolio including multiple Fortune 500 companies. While AGENTS.inc had been an early mover in the AI agent space, the company faced increased and well-funded competition in 2024. The founders needed to raise a seed funding round, to decide if they should continue their B2B model or change to focus on creating a digital agent store, and if they should release their software to open source. If they did so, they needed to decide what to make open source and what to retain as proprietary.

This case tells the story of Microsoft's 2018 acquisition of GitHub and the subsequent launch of GitHub Copilot, a tool that uses generative artificial intelligence to suggest snippets of code to software developers in real time. Set in late 2021, when Copilot was still in beta, the case asks how Microsoft and GitHub should roll out Copilot to the public.

This technical note surveys the concepts of free and open source software and hardware. It introduces the concepts in general, providing a brief history of their development and numerous examples of how companies employ them in practice. Further, it identifies various business models whereby companies can benefit from using and contributing to free and open source software and hardware. Importantly, these concepts often go counter to traditional business strategy teaching related to owning resources that are rare and inimitable. On its face, using free and open source software or hardware should not provide any competitive advantage because competitors can use the same products for free. Further, contributing to the creation of these products or open sourcing previously proprietary software or hardware, especially that protected by patents or other intellectual property protections, seems to be counter to these traditional strategy theories. However, in a growing number of contexts, it may make strategic sense for a company to use and/or contribute to open source software or hardware.

On December 12, 2020, SolarWinds learned that malware had been inserted in its software, potentially granting hackers access to thousands and thousands of its 300,000 customers. General Counsel Jason Bliss needed to orchestrate the company response without knowing how many of its customers had been affected, or how severely. The SolarWinds CEO was already scheduled to step down within three weeks, and the incoming CEO was as yet unaware of the incident. Bliss needed to address three immediate issues. First, did the incident qualify as a material event, and if so, what information did SolarWinds need to report to whom, and when? Second, what posture should SolarWinds take with respect to its customers and to the media, where the news was expected to break within a day? Third, how should SolarWinds balance helping its customers understand and recover from the breach with protecting itself from a negative stock price impact and potential legal implications?

Supplements the (A) case, describing actions taken by SolarWinds as well as by regulatory agencies in the aftermath of the immediate crisis. The case also includes reflections by SolarWinds managers on the choices they made with respect to disclosure, media relations, cybersecurity preparedness, and the sometimes-contending agendas of companies and government agencies SolarWinds interacted with.

Supplements "SolarWinds Confronts Sunburst" (723-357, -368) to provide context on types of cyberattacks and their costs, as well as-at the time of the Sunburst cyberattack in December 2020-the fragmentary regulatory regimes through which U.S. states and regulatory agencies attempted to encourage disclosure of cyberattacks and pursue enforcement action against negligence in failing to adequately safeguard personally identifiable information (PII), payment card information (PCI), and protected health information (PHI).

In 2021, Gina Lucarelli, leader of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Accelerator Labs, prepared for a meeting with UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner. The two planned to discuss the future of the Accelerator Labs, a network of social innovation labs located in countries throughout the world. The labs discovered promising solutions to social problems within a specific local community and elevated their learnings to the lab network. The first set of labs launched in 2019 and had high levels of autonomy, essentially operating as startups. While Lucarelli was pleased with the progress of the first cohort of labs, she was uncertain whether Steiner would continue them beyond their initial three-year funding window. Lucarelli envisioned three paths forward for the labs. The labs could wind down and integrate their methodologies into UNDP country offices, secure independent funding and spin out from UNDP, or reintegrate with the central organization and operate within the UN's research and development division. At the conclusion of the case, Lucarelli must decide which would be the best option to advance UNDP's mission of promoting environmental sustainability and global well-being.

In 2019, a decade after co-founding Nexleaf Analytics, CEO Nithya Ramanathan faced an important decision that would impact the ability of the small, but growing, not-for-profit organization to thrive for another decade. Their sensor technologies and big data analytics helped protect the planet and preserve human life by reducing pollution via smarter cookstoves and enhancing the vaccine storage process to help ensure millions of individuals across the developing world received effective vaccines. They had recently decided to relentlessly focus on these two core areas in which they faced growing competition from for-profit companies (especially in the vaccine domain), but an opportunity had arisen to expand into the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) space. Although there were some similarities with their existing technology, it would be a large undertaking for the resource-constrained organization. Should they stay focused on growing their vaccine refrigeration efforts to new countries, partner with fridge manufacturers to vertically integrate their offerings, or jump head first into the NICU field which had numerous existing players (none of whom offered what Nexleaf could). Further, as a not-for-profit, should they open source their core intellectual property in the vaccine space in an attempt to become a keystone player for the entire ecosystem, increasing their ability to achieve their mission?

The United Nations Development Programme focuses on solving the world's most complex problems, such as poverty and public health crises. Businesses can gain much insight from this sprawling U.N. agency, which has built one of the worlds' largest networks of accelerator labs. Here's what it has learned along the way and how some companies are starting to adopt similar models.

New studies show that companies can derive significant value from free digital goods such as open source software, especially when they pay their own employees to contribute to their creation -even if these assets become available to competitors.