Abstract

As big tech companies are entering new industrial sectors, an open question concerns the drivers of their expansionary strategies. This paper proposes that these companies are currently entering sectors based on their data-driven intellectual monopoly power, thereby complementing the preliminary answer provided by political economy research which has argued that expansion is driven by their infrastructural power. This approach is developed through a historical analysis of tech giants as companies that systematically turn knowledge and data into intangible assets, showing their expansionary strategies in the healthcare sector to be mainly driven by insights obtained from those intangible assets (a monopolized intangibles driver) and by a quest for conquering new knowledge and data to perpetuate their intellectual monopolies (an intangibles prospecting driver). The paper further illustrates its arguments through a case study of Google’s expansionary strategy and its prioritized incursion into healthcare.

摘要

随着大型科技公司进入新的工业领域，一个悬而未决的问题是它们扩张战略的驱动因素。本文提出，这些公司目前正在基于其数据驱动的知识垄断力量进入行业，从而补充了政治经济学研究提供的初步答案，该研究认为扩张是由其基础设施力量驱动的。这种方法是通过对科技巨头作为系统地将知识和数据转化为无形资产的公司的历史分析而发展起来的，表明他们在医疗保健领域的扩张战略主要是由从这些无形资产中获得的洞察力（垄断的无形资产驱动因素）和对征服新知识和数据以延续其知识垄断（无形资产勘探驱动因素）的追求所驱动的。该论文通过对谷歌扩张战略及其优先进军医疗保健领域的案例研究进一步阐述了其论点。