Mack Institute Research

Understanding the Relationship between Divestitures and Innovation

Working Papers

Few studies have examined the impact of divestitures on the innovation performance of firms. In particular, little attention has been paid into how the divestiture of firms’ non-core businesses could influence the innovation outcomes of their core businesses. …Read More

Optimal Taxation of Intermediate Goods in a Partially Automated Society

Working Papers

A recent rapid-automation movement has been displacing routine labor and has sparked a series of discussions about taxation on automation such as a robot tax. However, the government’s dilemma is that the planner may want to tax such physical capital that displaces routine labor for redistributive motives but does not want to tax other physical capital that increases such workers’ productivities.…Read More

Commuting and Innovation: Are Closer Inventors More Productive?

Published Research

Commuting is costly for employees, but is it costly for employers in terms of lost productivity? We study the causal effects of commuting distance on inventor productivity. Specifically, we estimate how inventor productivity changes when their employer relocates.…Read More

A Theory of Experimentation in New Ventures

Working Papers

Experimentation has been the center of a fascinating debate among entrepreneurship practitioners throughout the past decade. While intellectually stimulating and practically relevant, this discussion has received little attention from management research, and therefore has no scientific support. …Read More

Experimentation and Appropriability in Early-Stage Ventures: Evidence from the U.S. Software Industry

Working Papers

This study examines the tension between learning and appropriability in the experimentation process of early-stage ventures. I build a stylized model to argue that, when formal intellectual property is weak, the learning benefit of experimentation may be offset by its imitation risk. …Read More

Sizing Up Entrepreneurial Potential: Gender Differences in Communication and Investor Perceptions of Long-Term Growth and Scalability

Published Research

Across three studies, we examine how disparities in funding outcomes may be due to differences in how entrepreneurs communicate their ventures, whereby female entrepreneurs have a tendency to use more concrete language when describing their ventures than do their male counterparts.…Read More

Designing Customer-Centric Organization Structures: Toward the Fluid Marketing Organization

Published Research

Today’s marketing organizations face unprecedented turbulence and complexity. To anticipate and adapt to fast changing customer preferences and environments, executives seek to make their internal organizations nimble and agile by constantly developing, integrating, and reconfiguring new capabilities. …Read More

Beyond Jacks-of-all-Trades: Functional Diversity of Work Experiences and Employee Corporate Venturing

Working Papers

Many large firms try to encourage entrepreneurial initiatives by their employees, but the question of which employees undertake such initiatives has not been explored. In this study, we argue that the formal division of labor within a firm affects employees’ likelihood of engaging in internal corporate venturing. …Read More

Inventor Commingling and Innovation in Technology Startup Mergers & Acquisitions

Published Research

David Hsu, Management, The Wharton School, Qingqing Chen, PhD Candidate in Business Economics, The Wharton School, and David Zvilichovsky, Coller School of Management, Tel Aviv University Abstract: How does inventor team “commingling” (containing inventors from the acquiring and acquired firms) in technology startup acquisitions relate to innovation outcomes? Commingling reflects…Read More

Internal agglomeration and productivity: Evidence from microdata

Published Research

Evan Rawley, Associate Professor of Management, University of Connecticut, and Robert Seamans, Stern School of Business, NYU Abstract: We study how internal agglomeration—geographic clustering of business establishments owned by the same parent company—influences establishment productivity. Using Census microdata on the population of U.S. hotels from 1987-2007, we find that doubling the…Read More

Who Benefits from Having a Partner? Intrinsic Motivation, Partnership Decisions, and the Chance of Becoming a Profitable Firm

Working Papers

Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial firms are often the drivers of innovation, and success for entrepreneurial firms often means development and introduction of innovative products and services. This project examines the role that having a partner plays in early-stage entrepreneurial firm performance.…Read More