Strategies for Innovating

This project studies how prior work experience shapes who becomes an entrepreneur, when they found companies, and how successful those ventures become. Focusing on first-generation immigrants, second-generation immigrants, and native-born workers in the US, the study compares careers that begin in large technology firms with those that start in early-stage startups. Using employment histories from ...Read More

Xufei Liu, PhD Candidate in Operations, Information and Decisions, The Wharton School; Gad Allon, Operations, Information and Decisions, The Wharton School; Ken Moon, Operations, Information and Decisions, The Wharton School Abstract: Long-term memory is key to deeper learning, yet students differ drastically in how they acquire and retain knowledge. Current education platforms offer individualized practice at ...Read More

In algorithmic decision-making, it is often mathematically impossible to satisfy competing definitions of fairness simultaneously. This impossibility makes assessing stakeholders’ fairness preferences a challenging but crucial exercise. To address this, the researchers developed an interactive tool to elicit fairness preferences by projecting the complex decision space into a simple one-dimensional choice: setting risk thresholds. This ...Read More

The advance of AI is rapidly increasing cybersecurity vulnerabilties and the risks that organizations face. While working with non-exploiting hackers is recognized as key to strengthening cybersecurity, we still lack a clear understanding of the challenges and dynamics that impact whether such partnerships succeed or breakdown. In this project we aim to identify when, why, ...Read More

I am interested in understanding how high-growth, knowledge-based startups acquire human capital against the backdrop of the challenges and dilemmas that come with rapid organizational expansion. Human capital is a critical resource for these firms, allowing for increased production, knowledge, and resources. However, the dynamic nature of high-growth periods also poses significant challenges. Against the ...Read More

Sophia Pink, PhD Candidate, Operations, Information, and Decisions, The Wharton School; Jose Cervantez, PhD Candidate, Operations, Information, and Decisions, The Wharton School; Katy Milkman, Operations, Information, and Decisions, The Wharton School Abstract: When people want to build multiple habits, is it better to start them all at once or to layer them on gradually? This project ...Read More

Tiantian Yang, Management, The Wharton School Abstract: Female-led ventures in female-focused industries (e.g., FemTech) face a unique tension between authenticity and perceived legitimacy in the eyes of potential employees. While identity-based lived experience can signal market insight and mission alignment, it may also conflict with gendered norms about who leads high-growth ventures. This project explores how ...Read More

Private Equity (PE) investment in healthcare is growing rapidly. Because medical-technology firms shape healthcare innovation, spending, and quality—and rely heavily on public insurance reimbursements—PE ownership in this sector could have substantial long-term implications for innovation, costs, and patient outcomes. Yet most existing research on PE in health care focuses on care delivery, despite 63% of ...Read More

We propose and test a novel decision-making bias called “outlier neglect.” In general, when evaluating people, places, and opportunities with many features, people focus on the average of those features. For example, when hiring a team, people want the average performance of the team to be high, so they try to hire individuals who perform ...Read More

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 ...Read More