strategy

Differentiation in Microenterprise: A Field Experiment in Zimbabwe

Funded Research Proposal

In explaining variation in productivity in microenterprise, research has focused primarily on the adoption of effective business practices and access to capital, with little focus on strategic positioning. In archival evidence, we find that offering a differentiated product or service is strongly correlated with firm performance. Using a combined sample of nearly 10,000 microenterprises across eight developing countries, we estimated that a standard deviation increase in differentiation is associated with approximately an 11 percent increase in revenues and an eight percent increase in profit…Read More

Pursuing the New While Sustaining the Current: Incumbent Strategies and Firm Value During the Nascent Period of Industry Change

Published Research

This study considers the nascent period of industry change when the prevalent business model is being threatened by a new model, but there is significant uncertainty with respect to whether and when the new model will dominate. …Read More

Experimentation, Learning, and Performance: Evidence from a RCT

Working Papers

Experimentation is the center of a fascinating debate among entrepreneurship practitioners. Inspired by the lean startup, much current practice advocates the intense use of experimentation. Conversely, a large entrepreneurship tradition emphasizes the importance of design and planning. …Read More

Value Creation through Novel Resource Configurations in a Digitally Enabled World

Published Research

We propose a conceptual framework for examining the value‐creation potential embedded into novel, digitally powered resource configurations. We suggest that business digitization calls for firms to adopt a system‐based, value‐creation‐centric perspective for designing and organizing their resource configurations. …Read More

Alpha Assets: Building and Sustaining Competitive Advantage Through Innovation

Funded Research Proposal

This proposal is to fund a first study as part of a longer-term initiative to better understand the threat of disruption from technological innovation. Disruption as a term has come to be used so frequently that it has lost specific meaning. In the larger project, I aim to bring precision to the term and focus on two specific questions. …Read More

Building a Connected Strategy: From Customer Experience to Technology Platforms

Connected Strategy Conference

At the Mack Institute’s Fall Conference 2016, leaders from across industries discussed their companies’ pursuit of “connected strategy” defined by continuous customer engagement.…Read More

Strategy, Human Capital Investments, Business-Domain Capabilities, and Performance: A Study in the Global Software Services Industry

Published Research

In knowledge-based industries, continuous human-capital investments are essential for firms to enhance capabilities and sustain competitive advantage. However, such investments present a dilemma for firms, because human resources are mobile.…Read More

Strategies for Success in the New Era of Connected Ecosystems

A person in a suit gives a presentation, holding a device. Another person, seated, listens attentively with a cup of coffee.

Our Fall Conference 2015 stressed the need to trade places with consumers in order to identify opportunities in a landscape where digital technologies have changed all the rules.…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