New research published in the _Strategic Management Journal_ by Yang Fan, Lubomir Litov, Mu-Jeung Yang, and Todd Zenger explores the paradox of firms developing technologically unique assets. While uniqueness can protect intellectual property by making imitation difficult for competitors, it also isolates firms by limiting their access to beneficial technological spillover insights from rivals. The study developed a novel measure of technological uniqueness based on patent portfolios and found that greater uniqueness is associated with better firm performance, while less uniqueness leads to underperformance. However, technologically unique firms face higher costs, including fewer spillovers and difficulty for external analysts to assess their value, potentially leading to dropped coverage. The decision to pursue uniqueness depends on industry characteristics, such as the rate of common technology progress and capital intensity, with high-growth, R&D-intensive firms potentially benefiting most.