This book is a collection of essays about the emergence of routines and, more generally, about getting things organized in firms and in industries in early stages and in transition. …Read More
We study information aggregation in organizational decision-making for the financing of entrepreneurial ventures. We introduce a formal model of voting where agents face costly tacit information to improve their decision quality.…Read More
We explore the relationship between competition among downstream commercializing firms (e.g. incumbent pharmaceutical firms) and upstream innovative firms (e.g. startup biotechnology firms). We find that in an alliance regime, common in high technology industries, competition among the commercializing firms can reduce the productivity of the innovators, resulting in a net loss of societal welfare (e.g. less drugs invented and brought to market). …Read More
As much as prior research has shed light on the boundary-spanning processes of global organizations and their (positive) impact on an MNC’s performance, whether, when and how past performance ultimately shapes an MNC’s boundary-spanning activities remains an open question in management research.…Read More
Studies have shown that actors who affiliate with multiple categories generally do so at their own peril. Still, category spanning is routinely observed, although it is less understood. We address this gap by a longitudinal study of category spanning among nanotube technology inventors. …Read More
Getting an innovative technology to market can be a challenge for an established company when the technology runs counter to the company’s current business model. But the right organizational design can help.…Read More
Endogenous characteristics of alliance network structure have repeatedly been shown to predict future alliance ties in the strategic management literature. Specifically, the concepts and measures of relational, structural, and positional embeddedness (per Gulati and Gargiulo, 1999), as well as interdependence, are foundational for many studies.…Read More
Mack Institute Co-director Harbir Singh discusses his new book, The Strategic Leaders’ Road Map, co-authored with Wharton professor Mike Useem.…Read More
This paper investigates how “dual directors” enable firms that undertake corporate spinoffs to manage their post-spinoff relationships with the firms they divest, as well as the performance implications of dual directors serving simultaneously on these companies’ boards.…Read More
Organizing for interdisciplinary research must overcome two challenges to collaboration: the cognitive incommensurability of knowledge and the political economy of research based in the disciplines. Researchers may not engage in interdisciplinarity because they would have to invest in new knowledge unrelated to their discipline or risk losing career-related rewards.…Read More
Betting on the most promising new ideas is key to creativity and innovation in organizations, but predicting the success of novel ideas can be difficult. To select the best ideas, creators and managers must excel at “creative forecasting”—i.e., predicting the outcomes of new ideas.…Read More
We study the processes through which multinational corporations (MNCs) identify and make use of external sources of knowledge. Based on a seven year longitudinal study of one MNC’s overseas scouting unit, we show how a simple one-directional “channelling” process gradually gave way to three higher value-added processes, labelled “translating”, “matchmaking” and “transforming.”…Read More
While it is broadly recognized that sourcing external knowledge has a positive impact on firm innovation performance, we know very little about the firm level conditions under which this relationship holds. …Read More
We study optimal contracting in a setting that combines experimentation and adverse selection. In our leading example, an entrepreneur (agent) is better informed than the investor (principal) about both the quality the project (risky arm’s distribution) and the entrepreneur’s outside option (payoff of the safe arm).…Read More
New research indicates that individuals’ investment decisions may outperform those of the group. How can firms make better decisions?…Read More
New research by Wharton faculty Harbir Singh, Peter Cappelli, and Michael Useem reveals how Chinese business leaders are learning from their Western counterparts, and how they’re forging their own paths. …Read More
Wharton management professor Exequiel Hernandez searches for the optimal mix of domestic and foreign partners in a firm’s network. The answer depends on what type of innovative solution a firm is trying to produce.…Read More
Hospitals and academic medical centers are hiring chief innovation officers to transform the way they deliver care. But what makes an effective CIO in this industry?…Read More
This research investigates capability development at the business unit level of analysis. To do so, we consider business units that have been serially bought and sold, or “repeatedly divested” units.…Read More
This research project examines how organizations can develop innovative solutions to large-scale socio-economic problems in emerging markets through multi-stakeholder partnerships. The objective is to determine how these partnerships are built, what the optimal configuration of partners is, and how the partnerships should be coordinated.…Read More
