Do research organizations have generic strategies?: Cases from China

Porter's generic strategies offered a dominant paradigm (Campbell-Hunt, 2000)
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on competition for both business practice and academic study. Nowadays, most research organizations in China have to face competition issues as most businesses do. Can they find out their own generic strategies like Porter's for their survival and development in competitive system? Based on the approach of Porter's generic strategy, this paper discusses the generic strategy model for research organizations. As shown in the model, along with the two dimensions of horizontal difference and vertical difference of intellectual capital, research organizations may handle 3 generic strategies: focus strategy, platform strategy and combination strategy. Organizations stuck in the middle will fall flat and have to look for new approaches to build up their own competitive advantages in the competitive system. Data from 42 public institutes in China indicates that the three generic strategies could be recognized in practice.