David Hsu Archives

Strategic bootstrapping and startup experimentation

New ventures are grappling with the rising costs of capital (both debt and equity). As a result, investors of high-growth, technology-based startups are shifting focus to companies that can generate immediate cash. That is, investors are prioritizing cash flow positivity over growth. A recent report has documented that high-growth, technology-driven startups that are bootstrapped outperformed those that are VC-backed on both profitability and growth. Yet, the reason for this performance differential is poorly understood given that bootstrapping is an underexplored phenomenon due to the unavailability of large datasets to answer important questions. Through this study, we first seek to build a large, novel dataset that can facilitate research on bootstrapping. In addition, we immediately respond to two important questions pertaining to why bootstrapped startups may be better able to manage the balance between cash flow positivity and growth…Read More

Commercialization and Scaling Strategies of Deeptech Ventures

This study explores the commercialization and growth strategies of deeptech startups. Deeptech or Hardtech start-ups are a unique set of ventures whose offerings are grounded in breakthrough science and/or engineering innovation (MIT report, 2023). They typically span sectors such as the life sciences, clean technology, advanced materials, robotics, chemicals and quantum computing.…Read More

Research Spotlight: David Hsu on Effective Industry-University Collaboration

A person in a formal suit standing in a modern, brightly lit office hallway, with large windows in the background.

Collaboration between industry and academia drives innovation forward, but creating a successful partnership—and measuring its impact—is more challenging than it might appear. We spoke to Wharton’s David Hsu about his new paper, forthcoming in Management Science, on what makes industry-university collaboration successful, the importance of viewing innovation as a long-term…Read More

Industry-University Collaboration and Commercializing Chinese Corporate Innovation

We examine how industry-university collaboration (IUC) enhances Chinese firms’ commercialization of their technologies using a comprehensive dataset of medium- sized and large industrial firms and research universities in China.…Read More

Rich on Paper? Chinese Firms’ Academic Publications, Patents, and Market Value

By combining various databases of academic publications and patents of China’s publicly listed firms, we explore the effects of academic publications on firm valuation.…Read More

Revisiting the Entrepreneurial Commercialization of Academic Science: Evidence From “Twin” Discoveries

We construct a sample of approximately 20,000 “twin” scientific articles, which allows us to hold constant differences in the nature of the advance and more precisely examine characteristics that predict startup commercialization.…Read More

Inventor Commingling and Innovation in Technology Startup Mergers & Acquisitions

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

Benchmarking U.S. University Patent Value and Commercialization Efforts: A New Approach

University research-originated patented inventions are both becoming more numerous over time, and of higher “quality” as measured by standard social science metrics. Despite the significance of patented university research, it is difficult to observe the extent to which universities are able to capture the economic value from their patented inventions. …Read More

Analyzing Full Text Patent Documents for Business Insights

This proposal for research funding aims to develop a general tool using cutting edge machine learning methods to value patents.…Read More

Organizing Knowledge Production Teams Within Firms for Innovation

How should firms organize their pool of inventive human capital for firm-level innovation? Although access to diverse knowledge may aid knowledge recombination, which can facilitate innovation, prior literature has focused primarily on one way of achieving that: diversity of inventor-held knowledge within a given knowledge production team. …Read More

Corporate Venture Capital and Entrepreneurial Product Development

Increasingly, corporations are investing in entrepreneurial firms. This trend has not been overlooked by researchers in the management literature, but the majority of research studying the effects of corporate venture capital (CVC) overwhelmingly takes the perspective of the organization with the venture capital operation. …Read More

Trade Secrets and Innovation: Evidence from the “Inevitable Disclosure” Doctrine

Does heightened employer‐friendly trade secrecy protection help or hinder innovation? By examining U.S. state‐level legal adoption of a doctrine allowing employers to curtail inventor mobility if the employee would “inevitably disclose” trade secrets, we investigate the impact of a shifting trade secrecy regime on individual‐level patenting outcomes. …Read More

Commercializing University Technology

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

How to Zig and Zag for Start-up Success

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

Strategic switchbacks: Dynamic commercialization strategies for technology entrepreneurs

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

Knowledge Brokering and Organizational Innovation: Founder Imprinting Effects

We empirically examine the innovation consequences of organizational knowledge brokering, the ability to effectively apply knowledge from one technical domain to innovate in another. We investigate how organizational innovation outcomes vary by founders’ initial mode of venture ideation.…Read More

Resources as Dual Sources of Advantage: Implications for Valuing Entrepreneurial-Firm Patents

Why and how do resources provide sources of competitive advantage? This study sheds new light on this central question of resource-based theory by allowing a single resource—entrepreneurial-firm patents—to play distinctive roles in different competitive arenas. As rights to exclude others, patents serve a well-known role as legal safeguards in product markets.…Read More