Industrial and Corporate Change, 2016, Vol. 25, No.

1, 181–198
doi: 10.1093/icc/dtv052
Original Article

Exaptation dynamics and entrepreneurial

performance: evidence from the internet

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video industry
Kenny Ching*
School of Management, University College London, Gower Street London, WC1E 6BT UK.
e-mail: [email protected]
*Main author for correspondence.

Abstract
This paper explores entrepreneurial strategy by analyzing the Internet video industry. Data on en-
trants to the Chinese Internet video industry from 2006 to 2011 reveal how those that adapt to shifts in
the environment outperform less flexible firms. The paper also shows how exaptive processes,
including strategic commitment to user communities, increase resilience in start-ups that face such
shifts. These findings introduce an expanded view of entrepreneurial strategy by directly linking stra-
tegic choice to venture performance and clarifying the role of exaptation in entrepreneurship.
JEL classification: L26, L82, O31

1. Introduction
In December 2006, YouKu.com officially went live. Together with similar firms, YouKu started as a clone of
YouTube.com and sought to exploit China’s exclusion of YouTube (and other foreign Internet video firms). These
clones shared a common technological base, so they competed by offering different business features toward the end
of becoming the dominant Internet video-sharing firm in China. YouKu began as a pure user-generated content
(UGC) firm whose sole offering was content uploaded by Chinese Internet users, and it enjoyed quick success as the
overall Internet video market in China grew rapidly. However, the UGC business model was severely challenged fol-
lowing regulatory changes mandated by the Chinese government in 2008. YouKu, like many other firms in the indus-
try, was forced to change. Yet unlike many of its peers, YouKu decided to retain the UGC part of its operations even
as it switched to offer professionally produced content (PPC)—that is, content licensed from traditional media produ-
cers such as TV and movie studios—as its main offering. From this petri dish of entrepreneurial competition, YouKu
and a handful of other firms eventually emerged as winners. On 10 December 2010, YouKu.com was listed on the
New York Stock Exchange; it was the world’s first Internet video-sharing company with a successful initial public
offering of stock (Hille, 2012).
YouKu’s story is hardly unique; after all, the business world is replete with examples of firms that succeeded only
after a series of adaptations. Conventional wisdom presumes that the emergence of a competitive advantage requires
parallel developments of new and purposefully developed sets of capabilities or innovations that are tailored to a
changing environment. Yet anecdotal evidence suggests that adaptation is not always purposeful and that ex post
successful features are often alternate uses of original functions. This process is known as exaptation, a concept

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V
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182 K. Ching

borrowed from evolutionary biology. Exaptive features are typically produced by natural selection for a function
other than the one it currently performs, which is then co-opted by the new function. In the management literature,
the same term often refers to the exploitation of an existing body of knowledge so as to a gain a competitive advan-
tage in an emerging industry (Mokyr, 2000; Dew et al., 2004; Cattani, 2005, 2006).
Building on this body of knowledge and extending it to the nascent literature on entrepreneurial strategy, our
study documents how the most successful entrants in China’s Internet video industry emerged. Despite an exogenous
regulatory change that ran counter to the original business model of some firms, their retention of key features in the
model gave them performance benefits when they pivoted to a new business model. Our proposed explanation is con-
firmed by regressions in which entrants are matched by entry timing, ownership, and performance characteristics be-

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fore the regulatory change. This evidence suggests that in the Chinese Internet video industry, the most successful
firms leveraged capabilities gained from exaptive processes as their business strategies evolved.
This paper has three principal aims. First, it answers the call to identify appropriate methodological approaches
for studying exaptation. Although formal modeling has been used to describe the dynamic of this phenomenon, re-
searchers still face the challenge of devising ad hoc research strategies for documenting when and analyzing how ex-
aptation occurs in real-world situations. Our presentation involves outlining a novel empirical approach to the
systematic study of exaptive processes and then demonstrating that approach through analysis of the Internet video
industry in China, while leveraging an exogenous regulatory shock to address potential endogeneity-related issues.
We propose that longitudinal large sample studies of similar nature to ours can provide the appropriate research de-
sign for studying exaptation.
Second, in documenting that industry’s growth and trajectory, our paper presents systematic and large-scale evi-
dence of exaptive processes in the evolution of a nascent industry and also provides novel evidence of user commun-
ities serving as complementary assets. We demonstrate how early investment in building a user community plays a
complementary but also “accidental” role in a Web site’s eventual switch to offering professional content. That find-
ing has broad implications beyond the context of this study, as researchers seek to understand the strategic role of
user communities (West and O’Mahony, 2008; Bogers et al., 2010; Boudreau, 2010).
Third, we aim to disentangle the roles of luck and foresight in shaping entrepreneurial performance. In document-
ing the emergence and growth of a nascent industry, we show how selection and adaptation processes as well as luck
play key roles in determining the success of individual entrepreneurial firms. In so doing, we also provide evidence
that exaptation does not occur only within the context of technology, but also more broadly at the complementary
assets level.
The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 elaborates the intellectual and empirical bases of this research.
Section 3 describes the empirical setting and our research approach, which includes a novel method for studying ex-
aptation. After reviewing how the Chinese Internet video industry developed and advancing our propositions in
Section 4, in Section 5, we present the main empirical analysis along with key robustness checks. The paper concludes
in Section 6 with further discussion of our main findings and of their broader strategic implications for entrepreneurs
and researchers both.

2. Theory and related literature

2.1 Role of strategic adaptation and exaptation
Much scholarship has concerned itself with the life cycle of an industry; measures of interest include (inter alia) the
number of firms, the rates of entry and exit, and differences in performance and innovative activity. With regard to
the entry of firms, evolutionary economics and strategy have been invoked in much of the literature that links the per-
formance outcomes of entrants to their pre-entry resources and capabilities (Helfat and Lieberman, 2002; Klepper,
2002; Bayus and Agarwal, 2007). Although this view helps us connect technological pre-determinants with the devis-
ing and execution of business models, it fails to account for industry dynamics and strategic shifts.
Ignoring firm adaptation and change is a critical omission because in highly uncertain environments—which are
typical for emergent or nascent industries—few firms know ex ante what will become the dominant technology or
business model. There will always be some who argue that breakthrough businesses are characterized by a single
type of strategy and that a preferred model of business selection and execution should be followed whenever feasible.
Even so, the vast majority of practitioners and academic researchers in strategy hold that a strategy should reflect
and respond to the environment in which the firm or organization operates.
Exaptation dynamics and entrepreneurial performance 183

The literature just cited has increased awareness of the role played by change in the development of firm strategy.
However, the distinction between conscious adaptation and exaptation has been largely overlooked. One reason for
this oversight is the predominance of neo-Darwinian perspectives in management thinking, which has focused on the
development of new strategic functions to improve environmental fitness—a process that depends on the proactive
aspect of adaptation (O’Reilly and Tushman, 2008; Thompson, 2011). The literature on exaptive processes is much
smaller but has become increasingly influential. One line of inquiry in the innovation literature focuses on the inter-
action between exaptive and adaptive processes. Bonifati (2013) argues that exaptation may lead to “degeneracy,” a
property whereby structurally different elements provide overlapping functionalities and thus (as with adaptive proc-
esses) result in firms developing new functionalities. This theme is repeated in Lane (2011), who develops an

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adaptive–exaptive model of innovation (called “exaptive bootstrapping”) that is based on technology adoption and
incorporates not only technological but also organizational and societal considerations. Even more broadly, Dew et
al. (2004) noted how exaptation serves as a missing but central concept linking the evolution of technology with the
entrepreneurial creation of new markets and the concept of Knightian uncertainty.
Another line of literature seeks to link a firm’s exaptive processes directly to its competitive advantage. In a series
of papers, Cattani (2005, 2006) instructively demonstrates how Corning’s supremacy in the fiber optic industry is
owing to capabilities it developed before the emergence of that industry. The author shows that Corning’s success re-
sults at least in part from their foresight in developing capabilities that they could “recycle” even as they expanded
into new domains. Together with Dew et al. (2004), Cattani’s work remains the main empirical bulwark upon which
this burgeoning literature has rested, although larger-scale empirical work has been slow to follow.
Clearly, this broad exaptive mechanism—of a firm developing capabilities that are repurposed—should be an im-
portant one for scholars and practitioners alike, and we argue that the mechanism is one in which entrepreneurs
should be especially interested. Volatile industrial settings coupled with resource shortages require entrepreneurs to
stay nimble and experiment. In fact, scholars have characterized entrepreneurship as the act of performing “economic
experiments” (Rosenberg, 1992). This theme is echoed in the broader stream of practitioner literature, which empha-
sizes the importance to entrepreneurial firms of conducting strategic experiments and so developing capabilities that
can be leveraged in the future (McGrath et al., 1995). When one considers also how uncertain is the entrepreneurial
process (e.g., the true value of a particular idea is most likely unknown to the entrepreneur), exaptive mechanisms
are no less important than conscious adaptive mechanisms.
Yet there have been few studies examining the relation between an entrepreneurial firm’s capabilities and strategic
change, and what limited research can be found is mainly of a theoretical nature. Greater clarity is needed concerning
the origins of an entrepreneurial firm’s competitive advantage, as the role of strategy is fundamental to our under-
standing of the entrepreneurial process. The concept of exaptation can actually be extended to bridge the gap be-
tween advocates of “selection” versus “adaptation” while clarifying the roles of luck and strategy in the evolution of
nascent industries. It could well be that the most successful firms are those that developed key capabilities before
changing business models—even though the current applications of those capabilities were previously unknown.
Our field work serves as the basis for distinguishing the roles that luck and strategy play in entrepreneurship, and
we also borrow and extend Cattani’s (2006) original conception of pre-adaptation: the part of a firm’s knowledge
base that is accumulated without anticipation (foresight) of all its possible subsequent uses, as when it later proves
valuable for new (but previously unknown) applications. We argue that entrepreneurial firms can be endowed by
their past history with knowledge for reasons unrelated to the application of that knowledge in a new setting or op-
portunity. In so doing, we demonstrate that the exaptation concept can help resolve the debate over the precise role
of strategy in entrepreneurship. Extending Cattani’s claims about the role of technological pre-adaptation, we simi-
larly argue that it is exactly when entrepreneurs are least certain about the environment that they are most in need of
developed capabilities that can be repurposed.
That being said, the precise effects of luck, foresight, and strategic change on entrepreneurial strategy are not easy
to estimate. The paucity of empirical studies may be explained by the difficulty of observing a nascent industry from
its inception while accounting fully for the contemporaneous strategic choices of entrants as well as the ultimate out-
comes. Furthermore, one would want to accommodate the potential endogeneity of strategic decisions by way of
some exogenous source of variation associated with a subset of firms that change their business model or strategy.
Finally, the ideal empirical design for studies of this nature should also establish that the focal firms are pursuing
a common entrepreneurial opportunity; otherwise, there may be concerns that the sampled firms are not
184 K. Ching

well-identified. In the next section, we describe our approach to assembling a data set in which the consequences of
both adaptive and exaptive processes can be reliably assessed.

3. Empirical setting and data

3.1 The Chinese Internet video industry
Although existing studies (Gans and Stern, 2003; Hsu, 2006) have contributed much to our understanding of entre-
preneurial strategy, they seldom account for potential differences in the opportunities being exploited by entrepre-
neurs and so have difficulty isolating the effect of strategic choices. The problem is that variation among firms

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pursuing the focal entrepreneurial opportunity may bias results owing to systematic correlation with explanatory
variables. These studies have typically sought to overcome such bias, which arises from unobserved heterogeneity, by
using industry- and firm-level controls. That approach can be effective in settings where firms are easily distinguished
by such observable characteristics as products and use of resources. However, control variables are of limited value
when studying entrepreneurial companies in emergent industries because usually such firms neither fit well into pre-
vailing industry categories nor possess easily observable characteristics.
The fundamental empirical challenge is therefore an identification problem: we risk conflating the marginal effect
of the firm’s strategic choice with the selection effect of the underlying entrepreneurial opportunity. Therefore, a sim-
ple comparison between different strategic choices could lead to biased results because of unobserved differences in
the potential of various entrepreneurial opportunities. The ideal solution to this problem would be an empirical set-
ting in which there are multiple new ventures exploiting the same entrepreneurial opportunity; moreover, one would
want to follow the full population of entrants—starting with the industry’s inception—and to have detailed data on
both strategic choices and ultimate outcomes.
Fortunately we have access to just such a setting: the entrepreneurial development of China’s emerging Internet
video industry. China practices an active policy of Internet censorship and so foreign Web sites are frequently
blocked there,1 with video Web sites such as YouTube among the most frequently censored. The system blocks con-
tent by preventing—via firewalls and proxy servers—censored Web sites’ “Internet protocol” addresses from being
routed through. China also diverts Internet traffic from particular sites by way of so-called Domain Name System
(DNS) spoofing hacks. In addition to other online video Web sites (e.g. Dailymotion and Vimeo), YouTube has been
completely blocked from the Chinese Internet space since early 2006.
An unintended but extremely useful consequence of China’s tight Internet censorship is that it provided a fertile
ground for the development of China’s domestic Internet video industry. Entrepreneurs exploited the exclusion of
foreign Internet video firms from the Chinese market and copied the technological idea (which originated in the
United States) of distributing videos over the Internet; the result was a deluge of strongly similar “clones” emerging
in the Chinese Internet video industry. We leverage this unique entrepreneurial development to identify precisely a
set of firms that are exploiting a common entrepreneurial opportunity—namely, that of building China’s dominant
Internet video platform.
In general, the phenomenon of Chinese clone companies, popularly referred to as “copy to China” (or “C2C” for
short), has attracted increasing academic and popular attention.2 As the Internet industry continues to grow rapidly
in China, many domestic companies have successfully exploited entrepreneurial ideas originally developed in foreign
markets. Aided by the country’s rigorously enforced censorship policy, the Internet video sector is one of the most
prominent beneficiaries of this C2C phenomenon. And because the original entrepreneurial opportunity originated in
the United States, we are able to preclude “founder effects” from the analysis and so can directly assess the effects of
strategic covariates.

1 China’s Internet censorship policy is extensive and spans a wide variety of laws and administrative regulations.
Scholars have estimated that at least 18,000 Web sites are blocked from within mainland China and the number is al-
ways growing (Edelman and Zittrain, 2005). The government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) defends this censor-
ing by claiming that, within its own borders, the country has the right to govern the Internet according to its own rules.
(Bristow, 2010).
2 See, for example, “Chinese Borrowing,” The Economist, 7 May 2009.
Exaptation dynamics and entrepreneurial performance 185

3.2 Empirical data

This study is based on a newly assembled set of data on the Chinese Internet video industry; this data set covers that
industry’s development from its inception (in about 2006) through mid-2011. Working in conjunction with the major
telecommunication providers in China, we developed a complete list of active Chinese online video Web sites.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that the industry may have become active slightly earlier, but Chinese authorities did
not start keeping tabs on it until 2006. We augmented the list after referring to various works in the practitioner and
industry literature (Gannes, 2009). Any video Web sites not on our final list are likely to be obscure or unregistered
with the state, which in itself casts doubt on their legitimacy.
We then collected the historical cached pages of each firm on our list using the Internet Wayback Machine, which

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is an initiative started by the Internet Archive (a nonprofit organization based in California, USA) and maintained
with content from Alexa Internet. This service enables users to see archived versions of Web pages across time.
Together with research assistants, we coded each Web page individually by direct observation and categorization; for
each Web site, we recorded data that delineate their specific bundles of content, activities, and resources. Because
many of these firms underwent rapid changes in business models, we collected and analyzed data by each quarter of
the year. Altogether, we recorded data for 19 quarters, from July 2006 to March 2011.
The Internet Wayback Machine allows us to examine contemporaneous business model changes as well as the
survival or failure of firms, but additional measures of interim performance are needed. We therefore obtained in-
terim outcome variables from Baidu Index. Baidu Index is analogous to Google Trends, and records interest and
search volume for individual Web sites. Google Trends data have been utilized successfully to measure performance
for Internet-based firms, as the data directly relate to online behavior (Luo et al., 2012; Carrière-Swallow and Labbé,
2013). We also supplement Baidu Index data with data from iResearch, a research consultant firm in China. The
iResearch firm is a commercial media consultancy that has tracked Chinese Web site performance and Chinese
Internet users’ behavior continuously since July 2006, when the service was launched. This consultancy performs
functions similar to those of its US counterparts—most notably, ComScore. Firm names were matched manually to
the original list at a success rate of nearly 100%. In all, 146 firms are observed in our data set.
We also collected qualitative data on how organizations responded to regulatory change and on how they made
decisions concerning business models and strategy. Detailed schematics of the organization of video Web sites across
the entire spectrum of content purveyors were reviewed with industry founders, insiders, and media analysts to en-
sure that we understood changes made in the business models. This background work enabled a careful determin-
ation of the nature of business model change and its effects on organizational performance. Semi-structured on-site
field interviews with founders, investors, and media consultants in China were conducted in two waves over the
period from April 2012 to July 2013. We conducted a total of 19 interviews, each of which lasted between one hour
and an entire workday. Whenever possible, we crosschecked data with multiple sources.

4. A qualitative review of development in the Chinese Internet video industry

This section describes the dynamics of entrepreneurial competition in the Chinese Internet video industry as it un-
folded over time. The first period (2006–2008) is one immediately after YouTube was introduced in the United
States; the second period (2008–2011) was marked by radical regulatory change in China that invalidated the busi-
ness model of some of this industry’s firms. We shall focus on examining the role (if any) played by exaptive proc-
esses in the success of firms under these circumstances.

4.1 Contest of business models (2006–2008)

Although the Internet video industry originated in the United States, developments in China took place nearly in par-
allel. Entrants to the nascent Chinese industry grappled with developing the optimal business model as they sought to
become the country’s dominant Internet video platform. In particular, there was a fierce contest between the UGC
and PPC models (Artero, 2010).3 As mentioned in the Introduction, firms operating under the UGC model rely on
content sourced directly from users, whereas those operating as a PPC purveyor rely on content purchased from

3 In this paper, “UGC” and “PPC” are used with reference both to the business model and to the type of content; clarifica-
tion will be provided where confusion might otherwise ensue.
186 K. Ching

content providers (e.g., television and movie studios). In the United States, YouTube is the original UGC firm and
Hulu exemplifies the PPC model.
Although many Chinese sites began as pure clones of YouTube and thus offered only UGC, competing sites that
focused on offering PPC emerged rapidly. Field interviews attest to the dichotomous nature of these two forms of
content and to how they remain the dominant business models competing in this industry. A co-founder of a success-
ful video site described their differences as follows:

UGC and PPC are the two distinct forms of content . . . UGC is content sourced from users while PPC is content pushed to
users. YouTube popularized UGC but PPC had rapidly emerged as another form . . . The state stations had been putting con-

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tent on the Web for some time. Other private companies also started licensing material and putting [it] on the Web . . . for ex-
ample, Korean drama serials and Taiwanese variety shows.

Although the UGC and PPC business models are based on the same technological platform,4 they represent two
distinct modes of firm operation. In particular, maintaining a UGC site requires development of the specific capabil-
ities required to support a viable user community. Thus, UGC Web sites must develop infrastructure to enable the up-
loading and publishing of content by users while also providing incentives to encourage production and contribution
of that content (Milliken and O’Donnell, 2008). In addition, UGC Web sites must curate the content in an arrange-
ment that lends itself to effective marketing; hence such sites must develop the ability to interpret uploaded content
so that it can be properly classified at the outset (Villi et al., 2012).
These infrastructural capabilities—namely, supporting a user base and curating the content—demand significant
investment by the firm, in terms of both financing and time, if its UGC operation is to remain viable (Bharadwaj et
al., 2013). An executive at a PPC site added this perspective:

UGC is a problematic area that we did not want to pursue . . . it is not enough to just host any material, so you need to de-
velop ability to understand the content . . . [PPC] is simpler and more focused.

So in contrast to UGC sites, PPC sites operated on the relatively simple basis of paying original providers for con-
tent and then streaming it. Little or no investment is required to develop a user base, nor is any investment needed for
content analysis or curation. Instead, PPC sites simply relay television or movie content that has been previously
broadcast. In short, UGC and PPC sites rely on completely different sets of capabilities to support their business mod-
els. Prior research on the economics of Internet-based entertainment services point to similar dynamics (Sherman and
Waterman, 2014).

4.2 Regulatory change

A quasi-exogenous event radically changed the competitive landscape just described. On 31 January 2008, China’s
SARFT and Ministry of Information Industry (MII) introduced Regulations for Online Audio and Video Services, ef-
fective immediately.
The new regulations named SARFT as the authority to administer, monitor, and regulate the industry’s develop-
ment. The regulations also required all online audio and video service providers to apply for an “Online Audio-
Visual Broadcasting License,” with applicants agreeing to be governed by a standardized content-censoring system,
to receive funds only through approved sources, and to use “standardized technology” (Bristow, 2010).
Furthermore, broad powers were conferred or transferred to those regulatory bodies and also to the major
(mainly state-owned) media producers. These entities were now authorized to police and censor content found on all
Internet video sites, and they focused in particular on censoring UGC sites. For example, regulations required all
UGC Web sites to delete any illegal or undesirable content immediately upon finding it, to keep a record of such ac-
tions, and to report all details thereof to the relevant authorities. Any violator was subject to having its operating li-
cense rescinded and paying a penalty of as much as RMB30,000 (US$5000).
The effects of these changes were profound. In essence, the new regulations severely curtailed the effectiveness of
UGC as a business model. Hence, sites began to focus on transitioning toward offering PPC. Interviewees referred

4 Both business models in that period utilized the same Adobe Flash technological platform. Alternative technological
platforms have emerged since the period that we analyze, in particular the growth of HTML5 (and, to a much lesser de-
gree, of QuickTime).
Exaptation dynamics and entrepreneurial performance 187

often to how the 2008 regulatory changes affected the industry and forced them to adapt—and also to how sudden
and unanticipated the change was. As recalled by the co-founder of a previously pure-UGC site:

The 2008 regulations really changed the market . . . it isn’t so much that we were hosting illegal content . . . but the threat is
scary. We hear tales of competitor sites being pulled off-line for hosting undesirable content . . . it really forced us to start
thinking about alternative business models.

Figure 1 shows the distribution of sites in terms of the two models—UGC and PPC—from 2006 to 2011. Time is
represented in units that indicate the number of quarters from the firm’s earliest entry in the data set. For instance,

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time “1” (on the figure’s horizontal axis) corresponds to the third quarter of 2006. Starting in 2008 (at about time
“7”) the distribution skews sharply toward PPC, in line with our expectations following the aforementioned regula-
tory change. Figure 1 also depicts the overall population density (i.e., number of active Web sites) over time. The
graph reveals that, soon after the regulatory change, there was a massive shakeout in the industry before the number
of new entrants began to pick up again.
We leverage this event as an exogenous source of variation toward the end of identifying two distinct commercial-
ization environments. Because UGC as a business model was severely hampered by central regulatory changes, such
sites were under pressure to adapt by offering PPC. In other words, regulatory change provided an exogenous source
of variation in incentives for the subset of UGC-only firms to alter their business model. Thus, we take advantage of
this watershed event not only to study the performance effects associated with a firm’s changing of its business model
but also to explain how both adaptive and exaptive processes are involved in the industry’s development.

4.3 Propositions regarding the role of exaptation

Internet video firms were faced with clear choices after the regulatory change. For firms that had been practicing a
pure-PPC business model, there was no ostensible reason to replace or even modify their existing business model.
The UGC firms, however, faced distinct choices. They could plausibly choose to “stay the course” and continue
offering only UGC. Alternatively, they could change their business model and begin to offer PPC. Although firms
that began with an UGC business model were disadvantaged in the post–regulatory change environment, their initial
foray into the UGC world may have allowed them to develop capabilities that they could later—though unexpect-
edly—leverage while moving away from their original business model.
Casting the users of a video-sharing firm as complementary assets (Teece, 1986; Gans and Stern, 2003) allows us
to develop the main prediction explored in our quantitative analysis. In the new PPC model, previously UGC sites
were plunged into expensive battles to secure licensed content to stream. By 2009, barely a year post-regulatory

Percentage of Firms Number of Firms

70% 90

80
60%

70
50%
60

40% 50

30% 40

30
20%
20

10%
10

0% 0

UGC only irms Number of irms

Figure 1. Chinese Internet video firms: Strategy density (percentage using a particular business model)—and patterns of entry and
exit—during 19 consecutive quarters beginning July 2006.
188 K. Ching

change, YouKu was paying well over US$50 million a year in licensing fees to secure PPC content from movie studios
and TV stations (Montlake, 2012). Furthermore, much of this content could not be purchased on an exclusive basis,
unless fees were increased dramatically. This led to sites being distinctly undifferentiated, as they offer highly similar
content from site to site (Epstein, 2010). Together with Chinese audiences’ unwillingness to pay for content, the
video firms were in a bind as to figuring out ways to alleviate competitive pressure while staving off depleting cash.
It became clear that firms needed to find a way to beat back the pressure while distinguishing themselves from the
pack. Around 2009, certain firms started transitioning from being pure repositories of licensed video content to pro-
ducing the content.5 While they continued to license popular content from studios, they started investing in produc-
tion capabilities and sponsoring artistes to develop content that they owned exclusive license to. This was done for

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two main reasons. First, it gave Internet video firms a potential way to distinguish themselves from the pack, as the
self-produced content by construct will be exclusive. Second, it also gave them a plausible means to not only reduce
content acquisition costs but also to earn additional revenue as being the copyright holders; they can then license the
content out to other firms should it prove popular. The content produced was popularly referred to as self-created
content (SCC), to distinguish it from normal PPC.
Finding the creative talents to produce the content is not immediately straightforward. However, UGC sites with
their existing user base—which have been uploading content previously—may be able to leverage the amateur film
makers as content producers, as the firms switch toward producing content. In other words, users could serve as com-
plementary assets in the production of SCC. As recalled by the VP of operations at a UGC site:

We suddenly found ourselves with access to users who may have ability to create content, many [of whom] are part of the
artistic young . . . we started engaging them to help us produce professional content that we can license.

Nevertheless, venturing into the world of content production also carries with it significant risk, as the content
needs to conform to SARFT rulings and regulations. 6 UGC sites, however, should have had significance experience
(and expertise) in dealing with SARFT. The potential availability of users as content creators and the experience of
dealing with censors could serve as accidental yet unforeseen assets to enhance delivery of their new business model
as producers of content. These potential capabilities and complementary assets, which derive from supporting and
engaging users, lead one to hypothesize that entrants who successfully transitioned from a UGC to a PPC model will
outperform those that offered only PPC—and so neither invested in users nor benefited from their value as assets.
In summary, the exaptive process of repurposing assets (here, connections with users) for a new scenario (here,
offering SCC) may explain the superior performance of initially UGC firms as they pivot to offering PPC.

5. The role of exaptation: quantitative data analysis

To supplement the preceding qualitative review and propositions, we now undertake a range of empirical analyses
that relate the choice of a business model to later firm performance. The story presented here is a long and rich one
that includes several industry shifts and changes. The focus in this paper is on understanding the effect of strategic
change on the firm’s subsequent performance. Toward that end, we perform regressions in the contexts of firms that
ultimately failed (by testing for across-firm variation in outcomes) and of firms’ interim performance as measured by
number of visits (within-firm variation over time).

5.1 Variables
For our main explanatory variables, we coded the content offered by each firm. The content type we coded corres-
ponded to what was offered in the quarter for which that type was observed in the cached Web page. Thus, quarter
by quarter, firms offering content sourced exclusively from users (YouTube’s original model) were coded as “UGC,”

5 Similar dynamics have also been observed in the US market. YouTube runs a fairly similar program called YouTube
Partners, where they sponsor selected YouTube users to produce content that they own copyrights to. Other examples
include Netflix and Amazon (Prime), which all produce content now after previously existing as mere replay sites.
6 There are numerous anecdotes on self-produced content running afoul of the regulators. For example, the short TV
drama Love Finally produced by Ku6.com was reportedly cited by the authorities for portrayal of adult sexuality while
being self-classified as a “youth drama”.
Exaptation dynamics and entrepreneurial performance 189

whereas firms offering content licensed from TV studios and other professional content providers (Hulu’s original
model) were coded as “PPC”.7
When analyzing firm performance, we examined both interim performance and firm survival. For our firm sur-
vival analysis, the primary outcome variable was coded from measures of failure. Going off-line for six or more con-
secutive months was coded as a Fail (i.e., not surviving). Web sites that came back online after an extended period of
dormancy were few in number: among all sites that went off-line for at least six months, less than 15% were eventu-
ally restored. Our results are robust to the exclusion of these sites.
For our analysis of the interim performance of Internet-based start-ups, traditional financial measures (profitability,
liquidity, cash flow, net worth, etc.) are usually not available. So instead of using a more typical measure of financial

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performance (e.g., stock market returns), we use search volume for the focal Web site as measured by Baidu.com.
Search volume and other related measures of public interest have been used extensively as a proxy for users’ behavior,
which ultimately determines firm performance (Carrière-Swallow and Labbé, 2013); our analysis uses the natural loga-
rithm of the public interest index recorded by Baidu.com. Additional Web site metrics we collected from iResearch,
which include the average time a viewer spends watching each video, will help in our robustness checks.
Our models include controls for both initial conditions and subsequent competition between the Web sites.
Regarding initial conditions, we exploited the unusually rich institutional environment of China to control for the
ownership type of Web sites. Ownership type is acknowledged to be a key institutional factor because it indicates the
avenues through which a government can exercise control, thus affecting the firm’s choice of competitive position
and subsequent performance (Tan et al., 2007). Much like other sectors in China, the online video industry features
ownership structures ranging from pure private start-ups to state-owned ventures. We use the State indicator variable
to mark firms owned by the Chinese government.
For firm characteristics, we collected a list of venture capital (VC) investment events, which are publicly reported via
China-specific investment media. In this way, we created an indicator variable, Invest, that signifies whether the focal
firm has any VC investors. Because most of these firms are private, additional firm-level data (e.g., employment count)
were not publicly available. Finally, we also used our estimations to model competitive dynamics. Doing so required
that we control for the number of active Web sites in each period—a measure of population density, which has been
shown to correlate with firm failure (Carroll and Hannan, 1989). This number is our Number of active firms variable.

5.2 Estimation strategy

We first estimate a discrete-time survival model for change in the post-regulatory period.8 First, we define an indica-
tor variable, UGC_initiallyi, to mark all firms that started with the UGC model. Finally, we use the indicator variable
PPCi,t to signify an offering of PPC by firm i in quarter t; this variable is set to 1 if the firm offers PPC during that
quarter of observation (and set to 0 otherwise). Our main variable of interest is the interaction between
UGC_initiallyi and PPCi,t . In other words, we seek to measure how firms offering PPC in the new competitive envir-
onment differ as a function of their initial strategy.
Formally, we specify:

ln½pi;t = ð1  pi;t Þ ¼ a þ b1 ðUGCi nitiallyi Þ þ b2 ðPPCi;t Þ

þb3 ðUGCi nitiallyi ÞðPPCi;t Þ þ cðXi;t Þ:

We repeat the same analysis for our interim performance measures. Because we use firm-level fixed effects in our spe-
cifications, time-invariant factors such as UGC_initiallyi are absorbed. Formally, we specify:

7 Further details on the coding are documented in Appendix A (available online).

8 We acknowledge that these firms may be regarded as multi-sided platforms (as in Boudreau, 2010), especially those of
the UGC type. Although this paper does not debate the merits of particular platform-related strategies, our estimation
approach is similar to that used by many current studies on such strategies. One notable difference is that, in the base-
line regressions, we do not directly model network effects in terms of user growth dynamics (Boudreau, 2012). Yet this
difference should not present any problems because our procedure, in effect, matches treated firms with a set of con-
trol firms that are nearly balanced in terms of performance (number of users). Hence, in our estimations, all treated firms
have about the same number of users before the regulatory change, which eliminates most noise arising from specific
network effects.
190 K. Ching

Yi;t ¼ a þ b1 ðPPCi;t Þ þ b2 ðUGCinitiallyi ÞðPPCi;t Þ þ Xi;t þ Xi þ ei;t :

Yet the choice of a business model, like any strategic decision, is generally endogenous; that characteristic makes
it difficult to establish the direction of causality between performance and strategic choices. Although the dramatic
shift in regulatory environment lends more confidence than usual to the supposition that strategic choices affect per-
formance (and not vice versa), there remain justifiable concerns about the possibility of significant imbalances among
the different groups of firms. To allay these concerns, we performed a “coarsened exact match” (CEM) procedure
(Iacus et al., 2012) to identify a control for each “treated” firm. In our setup, the treatment group consists of sites
that started with a pure-UGC strategy but later (after the new regulations) adapted by offering PPC; the control
group is made up of sites that started with a PPC strategy. We identified controls based on the following set of

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covariates: quarter of the firm’s entry, its ownership type, and the number of visits during the four quarters preceding
the regulatory change in January 2008. We then coarsened the joint distributions of these covariates by deciles, a pro-
cess that involved grouping firms in terms of their performance under the old regime (i.e., before the new
regulations).
Following this exercise, our analysis focused on determining whether firms that retained features from their
original, pure-UGC business model exhibited performance superior to firms that abandoned UGC upon offering
PPC. In evaluating that hypothesis, we use much the same specifications in performing regressions on sub-
samples of the data set. The results of these regressions will yield insight into the exaptive processes motivating
this study.
All our variables are listed and described in Panel A of Table 1. Descriptive statistics of the variables—and the cor-
relations among them—are given in Panel B.

5.3 Regression results

We start by looking at firms that began with the pure-UGC model and switched by adopting PPC. We wish to ex-
plore how this strategic adaptation is related to subsequent firm performance. First, we examine descriptive statistics
of the strategic change by firms.
Table 2 shows the morphology of firms after the regulatory change in 2008. In line with our expectations about
the new environment, nearly 40% of all firms that started with a pure-UGC business model began to offer PPC after
the regulatory change. In Table 3, we present discrete-time regression results concerning the strategic shifts in busi-
ness models and how they relate to business failure.
The results are interesting. Column (3) of the table shows that, on average, firms that began as pure-UGC sites
yet later offered PPC were less likely to fail. In other words, sites whose pure-UGC model became disadvantaged
by the new regulations were, if they subsequently offered PPC, more successful than other sites. In column (4), we
now consider the period after the regulatory change. In column (4), we repeat the analysis but only for firms that
entered the industry before the regulatory change; the results are similar, although we lose some statistical
significance.
In column (5) of Table 3, we now change our baseline firms to perform a stricter test. We drop firms that stayed
as pure UGC sites throughout from the sample. In other words, the baseline firms are now those that both began and
continued as PPC sites. This refinement is important because it helps us isolate the performance effect of the strategic
transition, as these firms—targeted by the regulatory change—are expected to fail and hence may cause our results to
be biased upwards.9 As expected, the magnitude on our coefficient of interest is smaller, yet it remains statistically
significant. In other words, sites that transition to offer PPC were more successful than sites that never offered any-
thing but PPC.
Finally in column (6), we repeat our analysis but now with the CEM sample. Despite considerable statistical
power being lost because of the smaller sample, the data trends are similar to those observed previously. Firms that
started with an initial UGC strategy—when matched in terms of entry timing, ownership, and previous quarters’

9 Our initial set of analyses presents a detailed look at the failure rates of firms that persisted in using a pure-UGC model.
In the interest of parsimony, we do not present these results in the main paper but instead collect them in Appendix B
(available online). The results confirm that firms retaining their pure-UGC model after the regulatory change are associ-
ated with performance declines; this finding supports our assumption that, as a business model, UGC was indeed disad-
vantaged by the new regulations.
Exaptation dynamics and entrepreneurial performance 191

Table 1. Definition and descriptive statistics of the variables, and their correlation

Panel A Definition of variables

Variable Definition Source

Strategic variables
UGC_only Dummy variable set to 1 if the firm offers UGC only (set to 0 Internet Wayback Machine
otherwise)
PPC_only Dummy variable set to 1 if the firm offers PPC only Internet Wayback Machine
Mixed Dummy variable set to 1 if the firm offers both UGC and PPC Internet Wayback Machine

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PPC Dummy variable set to 1 if the firm offers PPC
UGC_initially Dummy variable set to 1 if the firm started operations with a pure- Internet Wayback Machine
UGC business model
Firm characteristics
Post2008 Dummy variable set to1 if the firm is operating subsequent to the regu- Internet Wayback Machine
latory change in 2008
State Dummy variable set to 1 if the firm is owned by either state or provin- SARFT, Internet Wayback
cial government Machine
Invest Dummy variable set to 1 if either a venture capital or private equity Investment news sites
company invested in the firm
Age Number of quarters the firm has been active since its founding Internet Wayback Machine
Quarter of entry Quarter in which the firm first entered industry Internet Wayback Machine
Other controls
Number of active firms Number of firms active in the industry during the focal quarter Internet Wayback Machine
Quarter of observation Quarter in which the firm is observed Internet Wayback Machine
Performance variables
Fail Dummy variable set to 1 if the firm goes off-line for more than six con- Internet Wayback Machine
secutive months
Interest Public Interest index recorded by Baidu Index Baidu Index
SCC Dummy variable set to 1 if the firm offers SCC Internet Wayback Machine

Panel B Descriptive statistics and correlation matrix

Variable Obs. Mean SD Minimum Maximum

PPC 752 0.78 0.42 0 1

UGC_initially 752 0.42 0.49 0 1
State 752 0.11 0.31 0 1
Invest 752 0.18 0.38 0 1
Age (L) 752 1.95 0.77 0 2.94
Number of active firms (L) 752 4.41 0.15 4.11 4.57
Quarter of observation 752 12.34 3.80 7 19
Quarter of entry 752 4.64 4.57 1 19
Fail 752 0.24 0.43 0 1
Interest 752 1.73 0.78 0.62 4.57
SCC 752 0.082 0.27 0 1

PPC UGC_ State Invest Age (L) Number of Quarter of Quarter Fail Interest SCC
initially active firms (L) observation of entry (L)

PPC 1
UGC_initially 0.32 1
State 0.14 0.20 1
Invest 0.10 0.24 0.16 1
Age (L) 0.06 0.24 0.09 0.21 1
Number of active firms (L) 0.26 0.00 0.07 0.17 0.03 1
Quarter of observation 0.40 0.05 0.06 0.16 0.29 0.49 1

(continued)
192 K. Ching

Table 1. Continued
PPC UGC_ State Invest Age (L) Number of Quarter of Quarter Fail Interest SCC
initially active firms (L) observation of entry (L)

Quarter of entry 0.21 0.31 0.07 0.13 0.53 0.11 0.34 1

Fail 0.39 0.13 0.05 0.19 0.05 0.05 0.07 0.11 1
Interest (L) 0.11 0.01 0.05 0.11 0.00 0.02 0.01 0.01 0.18 1
SCC 0.11 0.24 0.00 0.15 0.25 0.28 0.37 0.07 0.08 0.12 1

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Table 2. Pattern of strategic adaptation after regulatory change as a function of the
firm’s initial strategy choice

Post-2008 business plan Initial business plan

UGC PPC

Offer PPC 39.6% 100%

Offer only UGC 60.4% 0%

The key statistic in this table is that, among firms starting with a pure-UGC strategy and still operating after the
January 2008 regulatory changes, nearly 4 in 10 eventually adapted by offering PPC.

Table 3. Discrete-time estimation results for strategic adaptation and failure of Chinese Internet video firms

Variable (1) (2) (3) Pre-2008 entry Drop UGC-only CEM sample
(4) (5) (6)

UGC_initially 1.475** 0.575 0.490 0.311 1.189

(0.476) (0.576) (0.630) (0.614) (0.829)
PPC 3.366*** 1.353** 1.431** 1.176* 1.073**
(0.534) (0.539) (0.591) (0.526) (0.549)
UGC_initially X PPC 2.420** 2.455** 1.512* 1.622*
(0.795) (0.849) (0.838) (0.981)
Control variables
State 0.887* 0.604 0.650 0.377 0.377 0.406
(0.373) (0.394) (0.398) (0.450) (0.450) (0.541)
Invest 1.930*** 1.540*** 1.527*** 1.490*** 1.132** 0.553
(0.466) (0.454) (0.454) (0.495) (0.466) (0.510)
Number of firms (L) 0.117 0.189 0.0790 0.814 0.0221 0.175
(0.830) (0.791) (0.796) (0.893) (0.973) (0.239)
Age (L) 0.0831 0.134 0.0930 0.0151 0.257 0.175
(0.395) (0.433) (0.418) (0.494) (0.587) (0.669)
Quarter of observation 0.0239 0.141** 0.149** 0.199*** 0.0929 0.0721
(0.0636) (0.0627) (0.0638) (0.0755) (0.0841) (0.111)
Quarter of entry 0.104 0.0660 0.0757 0.0128 0.0146 0.131
(0.0777) (0.0773) (0.0764) (0.0926) (0.103) (0.120)
Interest (L) 0.565*** 0.449*** 0.471*** 0.377*** 0.573** 0.882***
(0.172) (0.172) (0.175) (0.170) (0.219) (0.265)
Constant 0.141 0.262 1.171 5.100 0.867 9.184
(3.903) (3.863) (3.928) (4.469) (4.891) (6.930)
Observations 752 752 752 653 566 408
v2 [df] 45.7 [7] 79.2 [9] 80.1[10] 78.9 [10] 46.2[10] 44.03 [10]
Log-likelihood –372.1 321.3 –318.4 347.1 233.9 172.0

Robust standard errors (in parentheses) are clustered by firm. CEM ¼ coarsened exact match; (L) ¼ logged.
*P < 0.1, **P < 0.05, ***P < 0.01.
Exaptation dynamics and entrepreneurial performance 193

Table 4. Firm fixed-effects estimation results for the strategic adaptation of Chinese Internet video firms subsequent to
regulatory change

Model Interest (L) Interest (L) Dependent variable

Interest (L) Interest (L) Interest (L) Interest (L)

Pre-2008 entry Pre-2008 entry Pre-2008 entry, drop Pre-2008 entry,
UGC-only sites CEM sample
OLS OLS OLS N.B. OLS OLS
Variable (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

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PPC 0.0821 0.0901 1.230 0.0885 0.186
(0.0707) (0.0760) (0.279) (0.0760) (0.229)
UGC_initially  PPC 0.348** 0.337** 1.540* 0.331** 0.114*
(0.116) (0.120) (0.355) (0.124) (0.0572)
Control variables
State 0.128* 0.0113 0.0128 1.551 0.0384 0.176
(0.0699) (0.0773) (0.0796) (0.470) (0.0861) (0.311)
Invest 0.297*** 0.280*** 0.297*** 1.434** 0.299*** 0.0355
(0.0792) (0.0848) (0.0857) (0.230) (0.0879) (0.0330)
Number of firms (L) 1.458** 1.441** 1.334** 4.041** 1.298** 0.0161
(0.483) (0.535) (0.593) (2.458) (0.648) (0.125)
Age (L) 0.0846 0.0524 0.0851 0.864 0.109 0.00517
(0.103) (0.0989) (0.0890) (0.0790) (0.0936) (0.0553)
Constant 4.520** 4.501* 4.004 0.0337 3.830 0.483
(2.142) (2.373) (2.642) (0.0910) (0.229) (0.578)
Firm fixed effects Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Time fixed effects Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Observations 752 752 653 639 566 408
Number of firms 137 137 100 86 72 56
Adjusted R2 0.01 0.02 0.05 NA 0.033 0.05

Robust standard errors (in parentheses) are clustered by firm; IRR reported for column (4); CEM ¼ coarsened exact match; (L) ¼ logged; N.A. ¼ not applicable;
N.B. ¼ negative binomial.
þ
P < 0.1, *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001.

Interest levels—still fail at a substantially lower rate than do firms that started with an initial PPC strategy.
According to our results, firms that began by using the subsequently disadvantaged UGC business model but that
switched to offering PPC were associated with significant performance gains in comparison with firms that were not
required to switch their business model.
We now turn to analyzing firms’ interim performance. The results of our firm fixed-effects regressions, shown in
Table 4, are in line with our earlier survival analysis. In column (2) of the table we see that, among PPC sites after the
new regulations, those that began as pure-UGC sites and transitioned to also offering PPC enjoyed a 30% increase in
(log) Interest relative to baseline sites; this result is significant at the 5% level. In column (3), we repeat the analysis
but only for firms that entered the industry before the 2008 regulatory change; the results we obtain are similar. In
column (4), the analysis was conducted using a conditional fixed-effects negative binomial regression on the
nonlogged Index. The results exhibit a consistent pattern: the coefficient for the UGC_initially  PPC interaction
term remains consistently positive and significant. Column (5) repeats this analysis by dropping sites that stayed as
pure UGC sites; column (6) uses the CEM matched sample of firms. Just as with survival analysis, the same trends
continue to hold.
Overall, these regression results confirm what might seem to be a surprising phenomenon: firms that did not start
with the PPC model end up outperforming firms that always offered PPC only. So despite being disadvantaged by
regulatory changes, firms that adapted and changed their business model to the eventual dominant one do better
than firms that never used anything but the dominant model. The analysis to follow will explicate the mechanisms
driving this phenomenon.
194 K. Ching

Table 5. Incidence of SCC in firms’ strategic profiles

Model OLS OLS Logit Logit

Variable (1) (2) (3) (4)

UGC_initially 0.129*** 0.117** 2.627*** 2.200**

(0.0338) (0.0421) (1.007) (0.806)
Controls Yes Yes Yes Yes
Time fixed effects Yes Yes Yes Yes
Observations 566 408 343 274

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Number of firms 72 56 61 52
Adjusted R-square 0.40 0.25 NA NA

The dependent variable is SCC, and the reference group consists of firms that started as pure PPC. Robust standard errors
(given in parentheses) are clustered by firm. Column (2) and (4) are based on the CEM sample.
**P < 0.05, ***P < 0.01.

5.4 Exaptation processes

The results presented so far suggest that the successful evolution of certain firms—in offering PPC—was key to their
performance gain. However, we should like to examine this case further to see if there were performance effects asso-
ciated with exaptation processes. In other words, we wonder whether firms benefited from the capabilities derived
from their initial foray into the ultimately disadvantaged UGC model. For this we distinguish between traditional
PPC and SCC. As discussed earlier in Section 4, the latter is content produced by amateur filmmakers and licensed by
the firm for distribution. This content can be in the form of short films, drama series, or movies.10
If the users carried over from developing a UGC platform are indeed complementary assets, then they should pro-
vide their associated firms with a competitive edge—by facilitating the development of SCC—over pure-PPC firms
with no experience in developing and establishing access to a user community. We therefore coded for another binary
indicator variable: SCC, which is set equal to 1 or 0 according to whether the focal firm produced licensed content
through partnership with amateur filmmakers. We then examined the incidence of SCC via a linear probability speci-
fication while using as explanatory variables, the firms’ strategic profiles (i.e., UGC_initially or not). We also provide
alternative nonlinear specifications using a logit. Results are given in Table 5.
The results agree with our supposition. The coefficient for UGC_initially is both positive and significant, which
suggests that firms that started off with engagement of users through offering of UGC are more likely to develop SCC
than pure-PPC firms. These results hold also for the CEM sample, which is further evidence that—from the firm’s
perspective—its UGC platform users are indeed complementary assets in the firms’ transition to producers of
content.
We repeat the same analysis for our interim performance measures, introducing SCC as a moderator variable. For
this exercise, in the interest of parsimony, we consider only firms after pivoting to offering PPC after 2008 (together
with those that had stayed in PPC mode). Formally, we specify:

Yi;t ¼ a þ b1 ðSCCi;t Þ þ b2 ðUGC initiallyi ÞðSCCi;t Þ þ Xi;t þ Xi þ ei;t :

The results of our firm fixed-effects regressions, shown in Table 6, exhibit a consistent pattern: the coefficient for
the UGC_initially  SCC interaction term remains consistently positive and significant. Column (2) repeats this ana-
lysis using the matched sample of firms. The results in essence suggest that SCC is associated with superior perform-
ance, and firms that started with UGC seem to be benefitting more than those that had not. Overall it lends support
for our supposition that exaptive features leftover from firms’ initial foray into the UGC world had lent them capabil-
ities and complementary assets—users in this case—they could exploit in their transition toward producing content.
Overall, the various regression results confirm what might seem to be a surprising phenomenon: firms that did
not start with the PPC model end up outperforming firms that always offered PPC only. So despite being disadvan-
taged by regulatory changes, firms that adapted and changed their business model to the eventual dominant one do

10 We have observed similar dynamics in the United States and international markets recently. YouTube, Vimeo, and other
Internet video firms have been engaging users to create professional, licensed content.
Exaptation dynamics and entrepreneurial performance 195

Table 6. Firm fixed-effects estimation results for the performance of firms post regulatory
change and pivot

Variable (1) (2)

SCC 0.102 0.0508

(0.137) (0.0830)
UGC_initially  SCC 0.273* 0.204**
(0.150) (0.0826)
Controls Yes Yes

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Firm fixed effects Yes Yes
Time fixed effects Yes Yes
Observations 491 372
Number of firms 68 56
Adjusted R2 0.03 0.07

The dependent variable is Interest (logged), and the reference group consists of firms that started as pure PPC. Robust stand-
ard errors (given in parentheses) are clustered by firm. Column (2) is based on the CEM sample.
*P < 0.1, **P < 0.05.

better than firms that never used anything but the dominant model. Further we present evidence that suggest that
exaptive mechanisms drove the process.

5.5 Robustness checks

As a first robust check, we performed analysis using such alternative measures of performance as Number of pages
viewed and Percentage share of total visits obtained from iResearch. The results remain similar for all models.
Second, we had performed all analyses on only a subsample of the earliest entrants—those that entered before 2008.
The main advantage of focusing on the earliest entrants is that doing so eliminates any concerns about the endogene-
ity of entry timing.
Another possible challenge to our findings is if these sites were fundamentally different from each other and
catered to different sets of viewers. That being the case would vitiate our empirical premise of a common entrepre-
neurial opportunity. Because analyzing just such a scenario is one of the paper’s key motivations, it is critical to es-
tablish that the Web sites in our data set attracted a common set of viewers—and thus can be viewed as having
exploited a common entrepreneurial opportunity.
For this purpose, we obtained data from iResearch on the Average time spent on a video. Chinese Web sites are
tracked by iResearch using a representative sample group of consumers and their video consumption behavior, and the
“average time spent” metric is measured in seconds. We use this metric as an alternative outcome variable in our regres-
sions. An argument challenging our assumption would predict that the average time spent on a video is correlated with
firms’ differing strategic profiles. The intuition behind that prediction is that the time spent on each video should differ
if the video Web sites are, in fact, catering to different groups of viewers. In other words, the Web sites in question must
be offering different kinds of videos. The time spent viewing videos is widely regarded as a reasonable (albeit imperfect)
measure of the type of videos viewed (Artero, 2010; Kumar and Tomkins, 2010). We fitted a fixed-effects ordinary
least-squares (OLS) specification in this part of our analysis, the results of which are shown in Table 7.
Column (1) of the table shows that the coefficient for UGC_only is insignificant, which indicates a lack of statis-
tical evidence for arguing that the user profile for these sites differs from that for pure-PPC sites. The same trend pre-
vails even when the sample is broken down in terms of the enacted regulatory changes (the Post2008 variable), as
revealed in column (2). This finding lends weight to our empirical claim that the Web sites in question were all pursu-
ing a common entrepreneurial opportunity when they entered the nascent industry. Thus these competing sites were
likely using the same kind of content, which legitimizes our presumption of a common entrepreneurial opportunity.

6. Discussion
Leveraging a newly assembled data set of all entrants to the Chinese Internet video industry between 2006 and 2011,
we present both quantitative and qualitative evidence indicating that strong firm performance is more characteristic
196 K. Ching

Table 7. Fixed-effects estimation results of time spent on videos segmented by business

models

(1) (2)
(Post 2008)

UGC_only 0.278 0.0563

(0.227) (0.215)
Controls Yes Yes
Firm fixed effects Yes Yes

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Observations 1128 752
Number of firms 146 137
Adjusted R2 0.04 0.06

Dependent variable is Average time spent per video (logged); Robust standard errors clustered by firm in parentheses.
*P < 0.1, **P < 0.05, ***P < 0.01.

of entrants that switched to the eventual dominant strategy than of entrants that started with the dominant strategy.
As a possible explanation of this puzzling empirical result, our evidence further suggests that a firm’s engagement
with the user community before the occurrence of a regulatory shock (a quasi-exogenous shock) plays a unique and
accidental role in their strategic switch—an exaptive process. We document how engagement of the user community
by certain Internet video sites allowed them to build a sustainable performance advantage sufficient even to overcome
the disadvantages entailed by a quasi-exogenous shock to the industry’s regulatory environment.
The empirical observations on which our analysis is based accord with extant literature addressing the importance
of complementary assets that underlie a technology’s commercialization (Teece, 1986). Scholars have emphasized
the role of complementary assets and how their interaction with an environment’s “appropriability” affects the firm’s
strategic choices (Gans and Stern, 2003). The availability and consideration of these firm-level assets cohere with
traditional explanations of industry evolutionary dynamics, yet they also enable a more dynamic approach to the
entrepreneurial strategy process. When making core strategic commitments, a firm is normally most sensitive to the
commercial environment. Nonetheless, its very next concern is typically how best to become adaptive in that environ-
ment by identifying and building (or modifying) the firm’s unique and tailored capabilities, resources, and market
positions that make its chosen strategy sustainable.
Our paper also resonates with the increasing body of knowledge on effectuation theory, as it relates to entrepre-
neurial decision-making. In a fast-moving world that defines most nascent entrepreneurial environments, effectuation
theory predicts that entrepreneurs are more likely to start with the means they have and assess for possible goals
(Sarasvathy, 2009). Our results cohere with this line of thinking as the Internet video firm entrepreneurs adjust and
switch in business models, arriving at an eventual winning model that is radically different from their original goals.
The main limitation of this paper is the endogeneity of strategic choice, which means that the reported results
should be interpreted cautiously. Even so, our work offers a methodological advancement beyond current literature
by controlling for the underlying entrepreneurial opportunity and then using matched sets of firms to run a quasi-
experiment that helps clarify the effects of strategic adaptation. Our results point to the dynamic role of entrepre-
neurial strategy-making. Some threads of the literature depict each firm as a largely unconnected and nonadaptive
entity in that they focus either on initial strategies and products of firms (in their depictions of industry evolution) or
on the entry and selective replacement of organizations. However, the results reported here suggest instead that entre-
preneurial strategy must focus on how firms and managers can best respond to and then exploit environmental
signals.
The results of this paper have implications also for new directions of research that can take advantage of similar
institutional barriers impeding the exploitation of original entrepreneurial ideas. This phenomenon is especially com-
mon in the digital age, where business models can be rapidly copied and modified while leveraging the same techno-
logical platform. There exist clones of collective buying sites (Groupon clones such as Coupang.com), of social media
Web sites (Twitter clones such as Weibo.com), and of social networking sites (Facebook clones such as
RenRen.com). China is an especially rich setting for such study owing to the combination of enforced institutional
barriers (e.g., the country’s Internet firewall) and “softer” barriers (e.g., its culture and language). Studying the devel-
opment of clones of original ideas spawned elsewhere relieves the researcher from having to account for the
Exaptation dynamics and entrepreneurial performance 197

confounding factors encountered in most traditional studies that seek to link strategy and performance (e.g., techno-
logical and founder effects). Hence, our identification powers are increased, making it easier to isolate the causal ef-
fect of strategic variates.
Like any study, ours has certain limitations. First, it offers evidence for exaptive processes yet examines just one
industry context. As such, this paper is more of an instructive industry case study than a strong test of our theories.
Second, the data do not provide a full picture of the firms’ time-variant organizational capabilities and resources—a
consequence of the limitations inherent to this industry setting. Future work could devise clearer measures of tech-
nical capabilities and resources. Nevertheless, as one of the first studies in exaptation that have departed from the
realms of technology toward a more generalized entrepreneurial setting, we see this as a necessary compromise to es-

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tablish a new research agenda of exaptation in entrepreneurship, with hope that future research might advance it
further.

Supplementary Material
Supplementary material is available at ICC online.

Acknowledgements
For helpful comments, I thank Scott Stern, Fiona Murray, Yasheng Huang, and especially Gino Cattani and Pierpaolo Andriani. The
primary quantitative data in this paper were assembled with the excellent assistance of Ziye An, Angela Mao, and You Wang.
Further, Leon Li helped provide invaluable data for robustness checks. All errors remain mine. I thank the Roberts, Hammond, and
Krasner Fund at MIT for financial support.

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