David Hsu

Research Spotlight: David Hsu on Sidestepping the Startup Integration Trap

A person in a suit standing in a bright office environment with large windows. Startup acquisitions by established firms are becoming more common, especially in fast-moving industries like tech and healthcare. But integrating a newly-acquired startup presents challenges, and can end up quashing creativity and worsening innovation outcomes. A new study, funded in part by the Mack Institute and conducted by Mack Core Team…Read More

Exploring the Demand Side for Commercializing Academic Science

Funded Research Proposal

Most of the prior research on the topic of commercializing academic science approaches the topic from the supply side (innovations from academic institutions and scientists). The needs and behavior of firms are rarely considered in this literature. We aim to do so by using a variety of data sources, both proprietary and public, to characterize technologies and situations in which firms are likely to license academic science. Doing so will also affect startup formation to commercialize such technologies, an increasingly important commercialization avenue.…Read More

Inventor Commingling and Innovation in Technology Startup Acquisitions

Published Research

We explore a form of post-acquisition integration where inventors from the target and acquiring organizations share and integrate technological and organizational knowledge while performing joint research and development. We refer to this phenomenon as “inventor commingling.” Grounded in the knowledge-based view, we posit that commingling enhances the target firm’s innovation performance by enabling the transfer of the acquirer’s organizational knowledge while preserving the target’s existing knowledge base. We explore how commingling differs from structural integration and how the two forms of integration can be combined for post-acquisition management. We posit that commingling diminishes the negative effects of structural integration, while structural integration may enhance the efficacy of commingling. Since organizational knowledge is firm-specific and cumulative, commingling efficacy should increase with acquirer commingling inventors’ tenure. To test these predictions, we assemble a large sample of acquisitions to study the effect of these forms of post-acquisition integration on acquired entity innovation outcomes. Our results support a positive commingling innovation effect, which is more pronounced under structural integration. A high degree of commingling can mitigate the negative effects of post-acquisition structural integration documented in the literature. We use direct flights between the acquisition party locations as an instrument to address the potentially endogenous process of inventor commingling. We find consistent results. Our study raises the possibility of inventor commingling as a distinct form of post-acquisition integration, which holds the potential of effectively transferring organizational knowledge and supporting post-acquisition innovation output, while sidestepping the classic post-acquisition integration-autonomy tradeoff.…Read More

AI-Driven Ecosystems

A glowing light bulb connected to a network of smaller bulbs on a dark background, symbolizing innovation, connectivity, and ideas. AI-Driven Innovation Fall 2024 Conference Report Artificial Intelligence has emerged as one of the most transformative technologies of our time, reshaping industries and redefining the competitive landscape. Yet the complexities and costs associated with AI development and deployment, coupled with the uncertainty of value creation, make it clear that no…Read More

Strategic bootstrapping and startup experimentation

Funded Research Proposal

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

Funded Research Proposal

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

Funded Research Proposal

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

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

Working Papers

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

Organizing Knowledge Production Teams Within Firms for Innovation

Published Research

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

Funded Research Proposal

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

Published Research

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

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

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

Knowledge Brokering and Organizational Innovation: Founder Imprinting Effects

Published Research

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

Published Research

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