Competing or coordinating: IT R&D investment decision making subject to information time lag

In this paper, we apply a dynamic option-game framework to examine the impact of information time lag on Research and Development (R&D) investment in innovative information technology (IT) industry. We focus on incentives of competition and coordination in R&D. Our results show that shorter information time lag may induce firms to coordinate their investments and avoid over-investment. The threshold of information time lag developed in this paper can facilitate managerial decisions on whether to compete or coordinate R&D investments.