Aldona Kapacinskaite

Hello!

I am a job market candidate and PhD student in Strategy and Entrepreneurship area at London Business School.

In my research, I study drivers of organizational innovation. My dissertation is focused on technology performance within an industry, innovation in the supply chain and cross-industry resource recombinations. Most of my research is based in the energy sector. I also have a secondary interest in digital platforms. My research was recognized by the SMS Strategy Research Foundation Dissertation Award and several grants from the Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship and the Wheeler Institute at London Business School.

I hold a double MSc in Economics and Public Policy from Ecole Polytechnique (Palaiseau) and Sciences Po Paris. Prior to joining the program at LBS, I worked as a research assistant at INSEAD and held research roles at Google and the European Commission.

Job Market Paper:

Solutions Looking for Problems: Idle Capacity, Resource Repurposing and the Technological Landscape

Prior literature posits that technologies used in one setting often invade other application domains, but a question in the innovation literature remains regarding the drivers of such events. I argue that negative industry shocks create idle resources, setting up incentives for resource repurposing—exaptation—from the original industry into other industries related in terms of resources but not necessarily product market. Firms facing idle resources have lower opportunity costs to repurpose and introduce seemingly novel capabilities in resource-related industries. This in turn drives heterogeneity in the technologies firms use. I exploit a precipitous oil price drop in 2014 to study the effect of idle capacity on redeployment of resources from the oil and gas industry to the wind power industry. I find evidence consistent with the argument that following a downturn, firms were likely to repurpose resources such as large-scale maritime equipment from oil and gas to wind power, driving technological heterogeneity between oil and gas firms and utilities. The study contributes to the literature on innovation and technological change by highlighting the role of industry downturns on the technology evolution in resource-related industries.

Link to the paper