Corporate VCs Yield Better Innovation Outcomes

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Recent research by Senior Fellow Gary Dushnitsky measures the innovation success of new biotech ventures by tracking their patenting and publishing rates. He and coauthor Elisa Alvarez-Garrido find that the identity of the investor makes a big difference.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

Hybrid Vigor: Securing Venture Capital by Spanning Categories in Nanotechnology

Published Research

This study develops and tests a set of novel theoretical predictions about the conditions under which category spanning is rewarded by external audiences. To do this, we revisit the assumption that comprehensible organizational identities are associated with individual categories.Read More

Student Post: Friends That Pay Together Stay Together: How Venmo has Gained Recognition by Exploiting Social Ties

Venmo

“Neither a borrower nor a lender be; for loan oft loses both itself and friend.” Polonius’s sage advice handed down throughout the generations lost its urgency for Penn students a year ago. Venmo, a startup by Penn graduates Andrew Kortina and Iqram Magdon-Ismail, has revolutionized reciprocity between friends by makingRead More

Acqui-Hires: Revolutionizing Strategy & Transforming Organizational Structures

MBA Research Fellowship paper

This paper explores the phenomenon of “acqui-hires”, defined as acquisitions of early-stage startups made purely to acquire talent. Acqui-hires are prevalent among Northern California’s high-technology companies, who use these to fill gaps in their strategic roadmaps. Taking the perspective of an acquirer, we examine the different ways acquirers approach acquir-hires relative to conventional acquisitions.Read More