This research project studies two related questions: (1) what shapes the decision to commercialize scientific discoveries, and (2) how does the commercialization strategy of high-technology startups relate to performance outcomes?…Read More
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
Does heightened employer-friendly trade secrecy protection help or hinder innovation? A watershed legal case in Illinois in 1995 provides a setting to investigate the impact of a quickly shifting trade secrecy regime on individual-level patent productivity.…Read More
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
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
How should a firm organize the diversity of technical experience contained within its pool of inventive human capital when firm-level innovation is a desired performance outcome? Using a sample of biotechnology start-ups observed from their founding onwards we examine the implications of alternate firm-level design regimes.…Read More
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
On Friday 19 and Saturday 20 April, the Mack Center hosted the Wharton Technology and Innovation Conference 2013, organized by Saikat Chaudhuri and Rahul Kapoor. The conference, which brought together a dynamic group of international scholars, featured panels led by Shane Greenstein (Northwestern), Karl Ulrich (Wharton), David Hsu (Wharton), Anil…Read More
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
How do entrepreneurial alliances shape new venture merger likelihoods and performance? This research is interested in exploring a knowledge mechanism which can cut both ways: as startups develop portfolios of alliance partners, there may be higher incentives for a given counterparty to try to acquire the startup so that it can mitigate the outflow of knowledge to other firms.…Read More
