Social Media and Startup Innovation: A Human Capital Perspective

Funded Research Proposal

In this study we plan to fill this research gap by examining whether social media can help startups to access broader knowledge and subsequently facilitate innovation. Our goal is twofold in this research. First, we explore the effect of social media adoption on startup’s knowledge diversity. Second, we analyze whether startups can successfully transfer the diversified knowledge into innovations.Read More

Towards a Causal Theory and Test of Network Effects: Structural Holes, Alliance-Network Externalities, and Organizational Innovation

Working Papers

We investigate whether the effect of network position on innovation is causal or spurious. Although empirical evidence demonstrates that certain structural positions in alliance networks (e.g. structural holes) affect firm innovation, it is hard to disentangle the factors allowing a firm to put itself in a certain position from the innovation outcomes that stem from being in that position.Read More

Multiplexity and Information Transmission: Evidence from the Diffusion of Microfinance in Rural India

Working Papers

This study evaluates how having multiple kinds of relations – multiplexity – affects diffusion by word-of-mouth information transmission. The study uses data from a field experiment in 49 remote villages in Karnataka, India.Read More

Do Institutional Reforms Perpetuate or Mitigate the Matthew Effect? Intellectual Property Rights and Access to International Alliances

Published Research

We explore how intellectual property rights (IPR), a type of formal institution, affect firms’ access to global alliance networks and their positioning within those networks. We employed a difference-in-difference design to assess the impact of IPR reforms across thirteen countries.Read More

Multiplex Network Diffusion

Working Papers

The networks literature examining the diffusion of complex innovations by social contagion has focused on the benefits of “multiplex” (or “wide”) ties in these processes. Multiplex ties span different types of networks to create inter-connectivity across subgraphs within a community. Read More

Small Worlds in Context: How Generalizable is Interorganizational Network Structure?

Working Papers

Our field’s growing attention to interorganizational network structure frequently builds on the Watts and Strogatz (1998) small world model. Our literature has identified “small worlds” — actual networks which simultaneously obtain relatively high clustering and short path length — in many contexts. Read More

Influencers’ Role Complexity Moderates the Benefits of Eigenvector Centrality for Diffusion in Social Networks

Working Papers

Existing research on the diffusion of innovations has focused on the benefits of using central influencers to trigger adoption cascades in networks. Yet, prior work has not examined how influencers’ role complexity moderates these benefits. Read More

Optimal Network Design for Inducing Effort

Working Papers

Many companies create and manage communities where consumers observe and exchange information about the effort expended by other consumers. Such communities are especially popular in the areas of fitness, education, dieting, and financial savings. Read More

Women, Rails and Telegraphs: An Empirical Study of Information Diffusion and Collective Action

Working Papers

How do social interactions shape collective action, and how are they mediated by the availability of networked information technologies? To answer these questions, we study the Temperance Crusade, one of the earliest instances of organized political mobilization by women in the U.S. 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

Skilled Immigration and Firm-Level Innovation: The U.S. H-1B Lottery

Working Papers

The growth of the global technology industry drives the migration of skilled labor towards countries like the United States that can utilize it, but the U.S. limits the immigration of skilled workers that are employed domestically by U.S. firms. Proponents argue skilled immigration allows firms to access technical skills that unavailable domestically and promote innovation, but there is little evidence of whether this firm-level effect exists.Read More

Networks and Innovation: Accounting for Structural and Institutional Sources of Recombination in Brokerage Triads

Published Research

Research linking interorganizational networks to innovation has focused on spanning structural boundaries as a means of knowledge recombination. Increasingly, firms also partner across institutional boundaries (countries, industries, technologies) in their search for new knowledge.Read More

The Impact of Context and Model Choice on the Determinants of Strategic Alliance Formation: Evidence from a Staged Replication Study

Published Research

Endogenous characteristics of alliance network structure have repeatedly been shown to predict future alliance ties in the strategic management literature. Specifically, the concepts and measures of relational, structural, and positional embeddedness (per Gulati and Gargiulo, 1999), as well as interdependence, are foundational for many studies.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