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

Breakthrough Recognition: Bias Against Novelty and Competition for Attention

Published Research

Adding to the literature on the recognition and spread of ideas, and alongside the bias against novelty view documented in prior research, we introduce the perspective that articles compete for the attention of researchers who might build upon them. Read More

Challenges in the Gene Therapy Commercial Ecosystem

Published Research

The emergence of biotech has resulted in a rich ecosystem of different types of actors contributing to the technological advance. Despite the enormous promise of biotech-based therapeutics, there is substantial uncertainty regarding when scientific discoveries will emerge, whether these discoveries will achieve clinical success, and how commercialized treatments will create value. Read More

Commercializing University Technology

Funded Research Proposal

University-based research is an important generator of fundamental scientific knowledge in society, and may also be the basis for valuable commercial activity. We aim to update and extend our knowledge of the processes of translating academic discoveries and inventions by studying the administrative data from Penn Center for Innovation (PCI). Read More

From Invention to Innovation: A Multi-Study Investigation of Firm Strategy and Outcomes in Clinical Trials

Funded Research Proposal

The translation of invention to innovation is a topic that has received significant research attention in recent times. Scholars have recognized that our understanding of the factors that shape whether and when innovative technologies arise and transform industries cannot be complete without comprehending how scientific or technological discovery evolves into commercial adoption. Read More

A Typology of R&D Processes Based on Market Excludability and Information Appropriability 

Working Papers

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

Strategic switchbacks: Dynamic commercialization strategies for technology entrepreneurs

Published Research

We present a synthetic framework in which a technology entrepreneur employs a dynamic
commercialization strategy to overcome obstacles to the adoption of their ideal strategy. Whereas prior work portrays the choice of whether to license a new technology or to self-commercialize as a single, static decision, we suggest that when entrepreneurs encounter obstacles to their ideal strategy they can nevertheless achieve it by temporarily adopting a non-ideal strategy.Read More