Upward Digitization and Downward Novelty in Book Industry

Funded Research Proposal

Digitization has fundamentally changed how content is produced, distributed, and consumed in cultural industries where novelty is an essential and necessary ingredient for success. Using the book publishing industry as a setting, we investigate whether and how digitization impacts content novelty.Read More

Welfare Effects of Common Ownership by Venture Capital Firms

Funded Research Proposal

This project aims to estimate the welfare effects of this strategy in the biotechnology industry, using a structural model of the investment decisions of VCs during the drug development process and the product market for the successful drugs.Read More

The Welfare Value of Online Review Aggregators: Internet, Search Frictions and the Restaurant Industry in France

Funded Research Proposal

The main aim of this project is to understand how online aggregators such as TripAdvisor or Yelp have impacted competition in the restaurant market, and whether and how much they have benefited consumers.Read More

Competition, Technology Licensing-in, and Innovation

Published Research

Although the relationship between competition and firm innovation has long been of scholarly interest, prior research has predominantly considered changes in internal research and development (R&D) as a strategic response to competitors’ actions.Read More

Internationalizing Firm Innovations: The Influence of Multimarket Overlap in Knowledge Activities

Published Research

This paper explores how multimarket overlap in knowledge activities influences firm decisions to internationalize their homecountry generated innovations.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

Patent Value and Citations: Creative Destruction or Strategic Disruption?

Working Papers

Prior work suggests that more valuable patents are cited more and this view has become standard in the empirical innovation literature. Using an NPE-derived dataset with patent-specific revenues we find that the relationship of citations to value in fact forms an inverted-U, with fewer citations at the high end of value than in the middle.Read More

Co-opetition and the Firm’s Information Environment

Working Papers

Some firms in the technology sector choose to cooperate with competitors (“co-opetition”) in Standards Setting Organizations (SSOs). These SSOs create technology standards that facilitate rapid market penetration of new technologies such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Blue-Ray. Read More

Competition–Cooperation Interplay during Multifirm Technology Coordination: The Effect of Firm Heterogeneity on Conflict and Consensus in a Technology Standards Organization

Published Research

We examine how competitive tensions and cooperative motivations together shape firms’ interactions and group‐level outcomes during technology coordination activities in multifirm settings. Read More

Do Consumers Value Price Transparency?

Published Research

We examine the role of price transparency in consumer preferences and demand. We assemble a detailed dataset on the driving school industry in Portugal to quantify how firms present the price of the course of instruction, and its individual components, to potential students.Read More

Vying for Amazon HQ2: Wharton and Philadelphia Come Together to Woo the Tech Giant

Pictured: Winning teams (Team Wharton Prime and Team Delphi) and judges The Mack Institute for Innovation Management co-sponsored the Amazon to Philadelphia Case Competition for Penn students to analyze why Amazon should locate their new headquarters in Philadelphia. The event brought together Penn and Wharton faculty, students, and the cityRead More

Plant Operations and Product Recalls in the Automotive Industry: An Empirical Investigation

Published Research

While there is overwhelming support for the negative consequences of product recalls, empirical evidence of operational drivers of recalls is almost nonexistent. In this study, we identify product variety, plant variety, and capacity utilization as drivers of subsequent manufacturing-related recalls.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

Conflict, Cooperation, and Consensus in Standards-Setting

Funded Research Proposal

We study how firms simultaneously engage in competition and cooperation in technology standard-setting multipartner alliances. Departing from prior research that has typically explored competition in isolation from cooperation, we bridge these two literatures by examining firm communication and community consensus in these venues.Read More

Strategy, Human Capital Investments, Business-Domain Capabilities, and Performance: A Study in the Global Software Services Industry

Published Research

In knowledge-based industries, continuous human-capital investments are essential for firms to enhance capabilities and sustain competitive advantage. However, such investments present a dilemma for firms, because human resources are mobile.Read More

Agency Selling or Reselling? Channel Structures in Electronic Retailing

Published Research

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

Do or die: Competitive effects and Red Queen dynamics in the product survival race

This study explores the reciprocal relationship between the nature and duration of competition, and innovation outcomes. We propose that the perpetually driven, reciprocal sequence of competitive action and reaction known as the “Red Queen” in evolutionary biology is a cardinal force behind the success of innovations.Read More

Business model configurations and performance: A qualitative comparative analysis in Formula One racing, 2005-2013

We investigate the business model configurations associated with high and low firm performance by conducting a qualitative comparative analysis of firms competing in Formula One racing. We find that configurations of two business models — one focused on selling technology to competitors, the other one on developing and trading human resources with competitors — are associated with high performance.Read More