More than ever before, companies have at their disposal immense streams of customer data. Professor Kartik Hosanagar highlights how companies can make use of this data to attract customers online.…Read More
The road to successful commercialization is a steep and difficult one — a fact which entrepreneurs know all too well. But like hikers who use a zig-zag trail to ease their ascent up a mountain, entrepreneurs may be able to more effectively reach their goals by taking an indirect route.…Read More
It is a familiar observation that entrepreneurship is not easily accommodated within the framework of neoclassical economic theory. Drawing inspiration from an ancient critique of neoclassicism by Veblen (Q J Econ 12(4):373–397, 1898), this paper attributes the difficulty to the tension between normative accounts of decision making (as in mainstream theory) and ideas of causation that are standard in the sciences.…Read More
Venture capitalists often choose to form syndicates (groups of VCs) which jointly invest in projects instead of one VC funding the project individually. What are the determinants of who chooses to syndicate with whom?…Read More
Mental models, reflecting interdependencies among managerial choice variables, are not always correctly specified. Mental models can be underspecified, missing interdependencies, or overspecified, containing nonexistent interdependencies.…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
Conventional wisdom says brainstorming works best when people from different departments or groups come together to think of new ideas or solve problems. But research from Senior Fellow Sarah Kaplan shows that diversity is not enough.…Read More
Recent research by Senior Fellow Gary Dushnitsky measures the innovation success of new biotech ventures by tracking their patenting and publishing rates. He and coauthor Elisa Alvarez-Garrido find that the identity of the investor makes a big difference.…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
When established companies explore opportunities to innovate, they typically consider strategies that fall into one of two well-known categories: incremental or disruptive. According to Wharton Professor David Robertson, they should be considering a third way: complementary innovation.…Read More
Does intensive internal training of employees lead to higher profits? In knowledge-based industries where the main asset is skilled professionals such as software engineers, the answer is yes, according to Senior Fellow Joydeep Chatterjee. But not all training yields equal benefits.…Read More
Most previous research on the learning curve focuses on improvements in manufacturing efficiency; this article instead studies the role of learning in product innovation, a vital component of sustainable competitive advantage in high-tech industries.…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
We study the impact of changes in the position of competing listings in organic search results on the performance of sponsored search advertisements. Using data for several keywords from an online retailer’s ad campaign, we measure the impact of organic competition on both click-through rate and conversion rate of sponsored search ads for these keywords.…Read More
Patent trolls are maligned for impeding innovation, but new research by Penn professor David Abrams suggests that they actually play a more complex and sometimes beneficial role.…Read More
In recent years, online retailers (also called e-tailers) have started allowing manufacturers direct access to their customers while charging a fee for providing this access, a format commonly referred to as agency selling. In this paper, we use a stylized theoretical model to answer a key question that e-tailers are facing: When should they use an agency selling format instead of using the more conventional reselling format?…Read More
Mack Institute senior fellow Charlotte Ren researches how a firm’s past experience can impact their present performance. In her article “Does Experience Imply Learning?” with Louis Mulotte and Jaideep Anand, Ren emphasizes that activities which led to previous success, while tempting for firms to repeat, may actually prove detrimental. This so-called “competency trap” distracts firms from exploring new opportunities.…Read More
New research indicates that individuals’ investment decisions may outperform those of the group. How can firms make better decisions?…Read More
Wendy Ham’s research asks whether there’s a better way to make predictions. By examining event characteristics and forecasting methods, she argues that it’s possible to create a cheat sheet that tells us which forecasting approach is the best for a given problem.…Read More
This article investigates how corporate spinoffs affect managerial compensation. These deals are found to improve the alignment of spinoff firm managers’ incentive compensation with stock market performance, especially among spinoff firm managers that used to be divisional managers of the spun-off subsidiary, and particularly when the spun-off subsidiary performs better than or is unrelated to its parent firm’s remaining businesses.…Read More
