Homophily and Consolidation in Intra-Firm Collaboration Networks and their Impact on Innovation Output

Funded Research Proposal

Research in management science has long posited that network structures, specifically the patterns of informal interactions among people, affect information flows and knowledge recombination. Yet, how do different network topologies affect the production of new knowledge and ideas? Read More

Loopholes of Creative Obstruction: The Strategic Gaming of Patent Claims and Families

Funded Research Proposal

This will be a mixed-methods study exploring, for the first time, ways in which firms exploit technicalities in the U.S. patent system with regard to number of claims and continuations. While at first blush this may sound like a technical paper targeting a patent policy audience, it actually will tell us a lot about the revealed strategic positions of hundreds of innovative firms and institutions. Read More

Scope versus Speed: Team Diversity, Leader Experience, and Patenting Outcomes for Firms

Published Research

How does the organization of patenting activity affect a firm’s patenting outcomes? We investigate how the composition of patenting teams relates to both the scope of their patent applications and the speed with which their patents are approved. 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

Using Machine Learning to Predict High-Impact General Technologies

Working Papers

Can machine learning techniques be used to predict high-impact, general technologies? We find that an ensemble of deep learning models that analyze both the text of patents as well as their bibliometric information can ex-ante identify such patents, accurately identifying 80 of the top 100 high generality patents in the hold-out sample. Read More

External Verifiability of Accounting Information and Intangible Asset Transactions

Working Papers

Firms commonly use disaggregated accounting information to facilitate efficient contracting over intangible assets. However, reliance on accounting measures creates information asymmetries and thus a role for contract audits.Read More

Managing Valuable Knowledge in Weak IP Protection Countries

Published Research

Although knowledge assets provide multinational corporations with competitive advantages in foreign markets, it can be difficult for firms to protect their knowledge in foreign countries – especially countries with weak intellectual property (IP) protection.Read More

Dual Directors and the Governance of Corporate Spinoffs

Published Research

This paper investigates how “dual directors” enable firms that undertake corporate spinoffs to manage their post-spinoff relationships with the firms they divest, as well as the performance implications of dual directors serving simultaneously on these companies’ boards.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

The NPE: Benevolent Middleman or Stick-Up Artist?

Working Papers

How do non-practicing entities impact innovation? This question has enormous relevance to industrial policy, with virtually no direct evidence to inform it. There are two dominant theoretical perspectives, one of which views Non-Practicing Entities (NPEs) as benevolent middlemen reallocating intellectual property (IP) to where it can be best used.Read More

Are Entrepreneurial Ventures’ Innovation Rates Sensitive to Investor Complementary Assets?

Published Research

Entrepreneurial ventures are a key source of innovation. Nowadays, ventures are backed by a wide array of investors whose complementary asset profiles differ significantly. We therefore assert that entrepreneurial ventures can no longer be studied as a homogeneous group.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

Publications and Patents in Corporate Venture-Backed Biotech

Published Research

Biotech startups increasingly turn to corporate venture capital (VC) arms for funding, rather than to traditional venture capitalists. The innovation implications for these startups remain unexplored. Here, we present evidence that the shift in funding patterns is associated with a greater output of scientific publications as well as patenting.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