Back to the familiar? How attention and rare experiences overcome local search in external technology sourcing.

Working Papers

In this paper, we develop and test a theoretical framework that considers how established firms forming partnerships with startups may be subject to spatial and temporal myopia and how these tendencies are moderated by the established firms’ histories of experiencing essential failures and successes in solving R&D problems. Read More

The Role of Frictions due to Top Management in Alliance Termination Decisions: Insights from Established Bio-Pharmaceutical Firms

Published Research

This study examines the termination of research alliances by established firms accessing knowledge from smaller research partners. We relax the assumption implicit in the internal tension perspective of alliance termination that signals from a partner are readily processed and acted upon.Read More

Competition, Technology Licensing-in, and Innovation

Published Research

Although the relationship between competition and firm innovation has long been of scholarly interest, prior research has predominantly considered changes in internal research and development (R&D) as a strategic response to competitors’ actions.Read More

Progress and Setbacks: The Two Faces of Technology Emergence

Published Research

Emerging technologies are an important driver of economic growth. However, the process of their emergence may not only be characterized by technological progress but also by setbacks. We offer a perspective on technology emergence that explicitly incorporates setbacks into the technology’s evolution and explains how industry participants may react to setbacks in emerging technologies.Read More

Standard vs. Partnership-Embedded Licensing: Attention and the Relationship Between Licensing and Product Innovations

Published Research

This paper examines the relationship between the licensing of knowledge and the creation of product innovations. We consider that firms organize licensing activities in different ways and that licensees are heterogeneous with respect to the attention available to apply and transform in-licensed knowledge to create new product innovations. Read More

Challenges in the Gene Therapy Commercial Ecosystem

Published Research

The emergence of biotech has resulted in a rich ecosystem of different types of actors contributing to the technological advance. Despite the enormous promise of biotech-based therapeutics, there is substantial uncertainty regarding when scientific discoveries will emerge, whether these discoveries will achieve clinical success, and how commercialized treatments will create value. Read More

Which Industries Are Served by Online Marketplaces for Technology?

Published Research

This study investigates a recent phenomenon in the market for technology: online marketplaces for technological inventions, which support the listing, search, and exchange of technological inventions by sellers and buyers. Focusing on three salient theoretical factors that affect markets for technology—search costs, ambiguity about the underlying knowledge and its applications, and expropriation concerns—our research systematically explores which industries are served by online marketplaces.Read More

How Are Established Companies Sourcing External Knowledge? Evidence From The Global Bio-Pharmaceutical Industry

Working Papers

Emerging markets firms in high-technology industries have long been thought of as laggards. We argue that this paradigm needs to be reassessed. Using biotechnology as an example for a radical technology we argue that emerging market, compared to developed markets, are well positioned to pursue such technologies.Read More

How Does Performance Feedback Affect Boundary Spanning in Multinational Corporations? Insights from Technology Scouts

Published Research

As much as prior research has shed light on the boundary-spanning processes of global organizations and their (positive) impact on an MNC’s performance, whether, when and how past performance ultimately shapes an MNC’s boundary-spanning activities remains an open question in management research.Read More

Decoding the Adaptability-Rigidity Puzzle: Evidence from Pharmaceutical Incumbents’ Pursuit of Gene Therapy and Monoclonal Antibodies

Published Research

The emergence of radical technologies presents a significant challenge to incumbent firms. We study firms’ management of radical technological change by separating their actions into upstream research (“R” of R&D) and downstream development (“D” of R&D).Read More

Building the Virtual Lab – Global Licensing & Partnering at Merck

Published Research

The case presents a situation in which Merck’s World Wide Licensing (WWL) division needs to make important organizational decisions to increase the speed, the breadth and the efficiency of its global licensing and partnering activities.Read More