Capturing Economic Value from Innovation Investments Archives

Business Model Innovation for Renewables

Consumers who want access to renewable energy have two main options: install renewable energy generation equipment “behind” the electrical meter (e.g., solar panels on the roof) or buy energy from a utility company, which would then source energy from generation companies. The first approach has obvious diseconomies of scale. It is only available to homeowners, while the second approach requires over-reliance on utility companies, which may not contract with renewable suppliers or may offer an expensive mix of renewable and nonrenewable energy. We study an alternative innovative business model, “community solar,” whereby consumers subscribe to own a portion of the energy generated by a large solar plant. We partner with Origo Energy, a Brazilian company that pioneered this model in South America, and we analyze the behavior of consumers who switch from the traditional business model to Origo’s subscription to understand boundary conditions for community solar.…Read More

Grid-Scale Mobile Battery Energy Storage Systems

Grid-scale electricity storage technologies play a vital role in balancing electricity supply and demand, particularly as renewable energy sources like wind and solar introduce greater variability into power systems. Lithium-ion batteries, accounting for 90% of U.S. electricity storage capacity, are widely regarded as essential to the clean energy transition. By storing excess electricity during periods of low demand, and thus low prices, and releasing it when demand, and thus price, is high, storage technologies smooth fluctuations in generation and earn significant revenues from arbitrage. Battery operators strategically locate systems in areas with high nodal price variability, but current practices often fail to adapt to changing market conditions, risking inefficient investments with diminishing price spread at selected locations.

Mobile Energy Storage Systems (MESS) present a transformative innovation, enabling both temporal and geographic flexibility in energy storage. Unlike existing Stationary Energy Storage Systems, MESS can be relocated to provide storage services at different points in the grid as market dynamics evolve with rapid addition of transmission and renewable generation capacity. Although MESS technologies currently find niche applications, such as disaster relief, advancements in material technology and declining battery costs make utility-scale adoption plausible. This study addresses a critical gap by modeling MESS fleet operations, analyzing their feasibility, and comparing their financial performance against stationary systems in renewable-rich grids. Our findings aim to guide developers and grid operators in leveraging MESS for enhanced energy flexibility and resilience in renewable-rich grids.…Read More

The Hidden Tolls of Reputational Risk: Using Media Sentiment to Detect Threats to Corporate Reputation and Its Financial Impact

Corporate reputation is a vital strategic asset for organizations. Yet, its socially constructed nature has made it challenging for scholars to agree on a precise definition or develop a reliable measurement strategy for it. Historically, scholars have relied on measures that are useful for assessing reputation earned but fail to capture its dynamic nature or identify emerging threats in real time, exposing a critical blind spot in both theory and practice. To address these limitations, I propose Cumulative Abnormal Media Sentiment (CAMS), a novel approach for identifying and analyzing reputational risks and opportunities by tracking abnormal volatility in stakeholder sentiment. To validate this construct, I conduct a quasi-replication of Caroline Flammer’s 2013 event study, extending her analysis of corporate news coverage of environmental events for U.S. publicly traded organizations through 2024. Using this expanded dataset, I measure reputational signals surrounding coverage of eco-friendly and eco-harmful corporate behavior. My analysis reveals a direct relationship between reputational risk from eco-harmful events and stock price volatility. This research offers new insights into the established relationship between reputation and financial performance, while introducing a replicable and adaptable measurement tool for event study analyses, equipping future researchers with a robust framework for examining the dynamic interplay between reputation and financial outcomes.…Read More

Exploring the Demand Side for Commercializing Academic Science

Most of the prior research on the topic of commercializing academic science approaches the topic from the supply side (innovations from academic institutions and scientists). The needs and behavior of firms are rarely considered in this literature. We aim to do so by using a variety of data sources, both proprietary and public, to characterize technologies and situations in which firms are likely to license academic science. Doing so will also affect startup formation to commercialize such technologies, an increasingly important commercialization avenue.…Read More

Strategic Openness of the Innovation Portfolio

We investigate the strategic openness of firms’ innovation portfolios, focusing on the determinants and implications of disclosure strategies for diverse innovation assets, particularly in the context of artificial intelligence (AI). While firms traditionally protect innovation through patents and secrecy, open innovation frameworks have gained prominence as firms increasingly leverage external sources of innovation. This research seeks to bridge the gap between the innovation and open-source literatures by exploring how firms disclose and utilize various innovation assets—such as patents, academic publications, and open-source code—in response to their R&D strategies, market environments, and policy pressures.…Read More

Product Innovation, Market Sentiment, and Resource Allocation

Our research aims to deepen the understanding of (i) how financial markets value product innovation across various firm types, industries, and economic conditions, and (ii) how market sentiment influences the private economic value of product innovation, its impact on firms’ and competitors’ profitability, and the resulting resource reallocation—such as capital, labor, and R&D—both within and across firms.…Read More

Exploring the Role of Artificial Intelligence in Turbocharging Innovation in the Generative AI Era

rtificial intelligence (AI) has become a transformative force in fostering innovation and productivity. In our prior research (Wu et al. 2020; Wu et al. 2019), we demonstrated that AI-driven analytics can significantly enhance innovation by combining existing technologies in novel ways and refining existing technologies. With the advent of generative AI and other advanced algorithms, firms are discovering unprecedented opportunities to innovate and create new products. Yet some firms are vastly successful at using AI to innovate while the majority fails.…Read More

Consumer Crypto Confidence Index

We use monthly surveys, each based on the same five primary questions, to construct the monthly Consumer Crypto Confidence Index. We also collect demographic data, political leanings, etc., on each survey subject for each monthly survey. So far, we have collected two-years’ worth of the survey data, and also the corresponding bitcoin price data. The primary objective here is to track how consumer confidence in crypto currency changes over time.…Read More

Recommendation Systems Fatigue: Capturing Effort Availability in Consumers

Recommendation systems have become integral to our daily lives, with apps suggesting what we might want to watch, eat, read, or invest our time and energy in. The average American consumer uses daily at least 3 apps involving some sort of recommendation system (Medium, 2021) and spend around $200 monthly on subscription systems (Yahoo Finance, 2024), 60% of YouTube searches come from recommendations and 40% of the apps present on Google Play offer in their services a recommendation system (GoogleDevelopers, 2024). However, 75% of users complain that these apps do not actually reflect their taste (The New York Post, 2024), rather leading them to be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of products offered (CNET, 2024). In particular, in online media markets, streaming platforms like Netflix rely on recommendation systems for 75% of its revenue (Medium, 2019) while companies like Amazon attribute approximately 35% of their e-commerce revenue to product recommendations (Quartz, 2018) and yet viewers lament a complete inadequacy of their algorithms (HBR, 2024). How is this misalignment becoming possible and how do we fix it? In our research, we hypothesize that integrating the current algorithms with consumers’ time and energy availability estimations might improve recommendation systems, increasing both consumers’ satisfaction levels and companies’ revenues.
Specifically, we propose a model where effort and time estimation can improve both the choice of content users select to watch – and their satisfaction with it – and the recommendation systems output. By factoring in the effort and time a user is willing to invest, the recommendation system can tailor content that aligns more closely with the user’s current state, thereby improving both the selection process and overall satisfaction.…Read More

Private Equity, Corporate Acquirers, and Product Innovation in Technology Acquisitions

Private equity has become an increasingly active player in technology acquisitions in recent years, yet most prior scholarship has focused on the effects of corporate acquirer ownership on performance and innovation outcomes. As a result, research provides little guidance on how firms should choose between the two acquirer types. To remedy this gap, I construct a panel data set of acquisitions in the chemical, biopharmaceutical, and medical device industries between 1990 and 2019, tracked yearly through 2022. Then, I examine how private equity and corporate acquirers differentially affect product innovation at acquired technology targets using USPTO trademark, FDA orange book, and hand-collected new product introduction data. Our results illuminate the opportunities and tradeoffs facing managers at technology companies in choosing between private equity and corporate acquirers.…Read More

The Efficiency of Dynamic Electricity Prices

The marginal cost of electricity fluctuates hour-by-hour, yet retail customers typically face flat prices. Using data from all seven US wholesale markets and a new method to evaluate alternative rates set in advance that accounts for equilibrium price effects, we estimate efficiency gains from time-varying price schedules that better align price with cost. We have three main results. First, time-of-use rates and critical-peak pricing, the two most common time-varying rate plans, each correct about 10% of mispricing. Second, complex rate structures based on historical prices often backfire. Third, real-time pricing with price ceilings can capture most potential efficiency gains while limiting customer risk.…Read More

Consumer Behavior and Cryptocurrency Confidence

In our endeavor to grasp the driving forces behind cryptocurrency prices, we have developed the Consumer Cryptocurrency Confidence Index (c3i), derived from a set of questions asked monthly to consumers across the United States. Our analysis has uncovered several initial results and pointed to an extensive, exciting research program on consumer behavior that shapes the cryptocurrency markets. Firstly, we are rigorously validating to what extent the c3i can accurately predict changes in cryptocurrency prices as a leading indicator by exploring whether this relationship is merely correlation or potentially causal. Furthermore, we are investigating if consumer characteristics such as age, gender, and political leanings can enhance the accuracy of our index in predicting cryptocurrency prices. We are also examining if the relationship observed between c3i and cryptocurrency prices extends to broader stock market indices like the S&P…Read More

Premium or Penalty? Differential Effects of Gender and Race on Internal Promotions to Top-Management Positions

Our groundbreaking research explores the evolving landscape of leadership diversity in top management. Despite the pressure on organizations to improve diversity, empirical evidence remains mixed. Our study uniquely examines the disparities in promotion outcomes for women and racial minorities, leveraging a vast dataset of approximately 100 million online job profiles from 7,000 large U.S. firms (2014-2023). We propose a new theory combining institutional and categorical inequality perspectives to explain why gender diversity has progressed more than racial diversity in top management. This research provides critical insights into the conditions that foster effective diversity initiatives in senior corporate roles.…Read More

Strategic bootstrapping and startup experimentation

New ventures are grappling with the rising costs of capital (both debt and equity). As a result, investors of high-growth, technology-based startups are shifting focus to companies that can generate immediate cash. That is, investors are prioritizing cash flow positivity over growth. A recent report has documented that high-growth, technology-driven startups that are bootstrapped outperformed those that are VC-backed on both profitability and growth. Yet, the reason for this performance differential is poorly understood given that bootstrapping is an underexplored phenomenon due to the unavailability of large datasets to answer important questions. Through this study, we first seek to build a large, novel dataset that can facilitate research on bootstrapping. In addition, we immediately respond to two important questions pertaining to why bootstrapped startups may be better able to manage the balance between cash flow positivity and growth…Read More

Career Effects of Venture Capital on High-Technology Startup Employees

Venture capital (VC) significantly contributes to job creation and innovation in high-tech startups, with around 50% of tech companies reaching IPOs in the past three decades having VC backing. While the benefits of VC on startups and regional economies are well-documented, its impact on individual career trajectories remains underexplored. This research proposal investigates how VC financing influences employee turnover and career progression within startups. VC investment can lead to higher wages and faster promotions, enhancing employee value. However…Read More

Electric Vehicle (EV) Fleet and Charging Infrastructure: Decision-Making by Drivers

The gig economy is rapidly integrating electric vehicles (EVs) into its infrastructure, particularly within ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft. Algorithms play a crucial role in this ecosystem, determining customer pricing, driver compensation, and matching drivers with customers. While these algorithms have enabled efficient matching of supply and demand, they also face criticisms, including a lack of transparency, potential bias, and inefficiency. This study investigates the decision-making processes of EV drivers within the gig economy, focusing on how charging infrastructure and fleet size impact…Read More

Commercialization and Scaling Strategies of Deeptech Ventures

This study explores the commercialization and growth strategies of deeptech startups. Deeptech or Hardtech start-ups are a unique set of ventures whose offerings are grounded in breakthrough science and/or engineering innovation (MIT report, 2023). They typically span sectors such as the life sciences, clean technology, advanced materials, robotics, chemicals and quantum computing.…Read More

Private Equity, Corporate Acquirers, & Product Innovation: An Investigation of Corporate Science Acquisitions 1990-2022

Private equity has become an increasingly active player in technology acquisitions in recent years, yet most strategy scholarship has focused on the effects of corporate acquirer ownership on innovation outcomes, providing little guidance to managers on how to choose between the two M&A options. To remedy this gap, I examine how private equity and corporate acquirers differentially affect product innovation at acquired targets using hand-collected new product introduction announcements.…Read More

When Uber Comes to Town: Transportation and Health Care Inequality

Transportation is a critical factor in accessing healthcare services, but its role in shaping health disparities remains understudied. This research project investigates the impact of transportation on healthcare access and health inequality. Using large-scale datasets, the study aims to identify the causal effects of improved local accessibility on healthcare utilization…Read More

Market Design and Returns to Data in Mobile Advertising

Advertising supports a significant fraction of the internet, enabling free web search and news services. These ads are intermediated by advertising networks, which assign ad slots to potential advertisers through auctions. In this project, we will collaborate with a large mobile advertising intermediation network to investigate (i) to what extent a reduction in available data (e.g., due to Apple’s new privacy policies) lowers the value created by mobile advertising and (ii) whether more decentralized markets are desirable after accounting for the trade-off between this decrease in value and having a more competitive market.…Read More