2024

Abstract: Evaluation processes are critical in science and innovation, determining which innovative ideas receive crucial resources. We estimate the extent to which “luck,” or random factors unrelated to idea quality, can bias selection in such processes. We analyze 16,278 evaluations of 2,813 innovation-driven startups by 1,052 judges in a pitch competition for admission to one of the world’s largest entrepreneurship accelerators (2013–2021). Human relational elements of luck, particularly contrast effects between sequentially evaluated competitors and drawing strict or lenient judges, have large effects, with moderate variation impacting a startup’s likelihood of admission by 25%. Timing-based elements of luck, such as time of day and weather, has negligible effect. A simulation analysis indicates that aggregate variation across these luck factors plays a substantial role in which ideas are selected. These findings show that luck can distort resource allocation and indicate that evaluation processes should be designed to minimize this bias. We also discuss implications for evaluation process design.

Prof. Poskanzer is an Assistant Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship in the Leeds School of Business. He received a Ph.D. from the MIT Sloan School of Management and a B.A. from Syracuse University. Ethan studies how organizations can select and connect people to develop innovative ideas and is particularly interested in how the opportunity to innovate can be democratized and made more inclusive. To do this research, he has partnered a wide range of organizations including entrepreneurship accelerators, job recruitment platforms and universities. His research has been published in Organization Science, the American Sociological Review and the American Journal of Sociology.

Abstract: Migrants play an important role in transferring knowledge and resources across organizations and borders, which in turn affects the rate of innovation of those who remain at home. However, research on how migrants influence the direction of innovation of their non-migrant peers is limited: How does exposure to a migrant affect non-migrants’ research agendas? In the context of South-South migration of female scientists, we compare the disease orientation of non-migrants' research output before and after the migration of a peer against a control group of non-migrants whose peers applied for, but did not receive, a fellowship for foreign study. We document that non-migrants publish more after their peers migrate, and their relative rate of publication in diseases that are prevalent in both home and host countries increases. Our results suggest that migrants can broker access to knowledge and collaborations that can increase their home country peers' focus on shared local problems. This study underscores how bridging networks of knowledge workers can enhance and direct innovation on pressing problems.

Prof. Subramani is an Assistant Professor in the Management Department at Lehigh University’s College of Business. She also holds an appointment as an Economist at the U.S. Patent Office (Office of the Chief Economist). She received her Ph.D. from UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business in 2021. Prior to beginning graduate school, She worked as a political appointee in the Office of Economic Policy at the Department of Treasury under President Obama. She received my B.A. from Wellesley College, where I majored in English and Economics. Prof. Subramani's research lies at the nexus of innovation and representation. In her work, she quantifies the magnitude of gender and resource inequality in innovation contexts and identifies the mechanisms by which these arise, along with opportunities for interventions to reduce performance gaps. She uses empirical tools and quantitative analysis to explore the dynamics of representation in a variety of settings, including the U.S. patent application system, scientific research, and digital platforms. 

Abstract: Open source is key to innovation, but we know little about how to incentivize it. In this paper, we examine the impact of a program providing monetary incentives to motivate innovators to contribute to open source. The Sponsors program was introduced by GitHub in May 2019 and enabled organizations and individuals alike to reward developers for their open source work on the platform. To study this program, we collect fine-grained data on about 100,000 GitHub users, their activities, and sponsorship events. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we document two main effects. The first is that developers who opted into the program, which does not entail receiving a financial reward, increased their output after the program’s launch. The second is that the actual receipt of sponsorship has a long-lasting negative effect on innovation, as measured by new repository creation, regardless of the amount of money received. We estimate a similar decline in other community-oriented tasks, but not in coding effort. While the program’s net effect on users’ innovative output appears to be positive, our study shows that receiving an extrinsic reward may crowd out developers’ intrinsic motivation, diverting their effort away from community and service-oriented activities on open source.

Prof. Conti is a full professor at IE Business School and serves as an associate editor at Management Science and co-editor of Strategy Science and Journal of Economics & Management Strategy. Annamaria is a renowned expert in innovation, entrepreneurship, and the economics of science. Her work has been widely recognized, earning her numerous awards such as 2018 Brady Family Award for Faculty Research Excellence, DRUID Young Scholar Best Paper Award, REER Conference Best Junior Paper, as well as 2022 Strategy Science Conference Best Paper Award. 

2023

Abstract: Accelerators, such as Techstars, Startup Chile, and Y Combinator, are increasingly prevalent parts of entrepreneurial landscapes. These fixed-length entrepreneurial development programs aid cohorts of startups by providing mentorship, networks, and signals of endorsement. Accelerators can have substantial positive effects on startup development and also shorten the time to shutting-down. However, since prior work has focused on startup-level outcomes such as financing, employee growth and customer traction, less is known about individual-level outcomes. In this short research study, we examine if accelerators providing start-up level benefits also amplify founders’ subsequent entrepreneurial careers, including raising their likelihood of founding or joining another startup and raising venture capital if they do so. We examine our research question using proprietary data on the accepted and almost-accepted applicants to a set of top accelerators. Unexpectedly, especially given that the sampled accelerator cohorts have been found to have boosted participating ventures, we observe no consistent evidence that these accelerators boost the subsequent entrepreneurial careers of participating founders. Our results contribute at the intersection of the literature on entrepreneur development programs and entrepreneurial careers, offering initial evidence of a decoupling between programs' impact on startups versus founders. We conclude by discussing how these unexpected findings create opportunities for future research.

Prof. Yu is an assistant professor in strategic management and entrepreneurship at the Carlson School. Her research examines key strategic concerns of entrepreneurs: fundraising and growth. Her current work focuses on the impact of start-up financing from sources such as venture capital, accelerators, and crowdfunding. Her research is supported by the Kauffman Foundation and the National Science Foundation. Dr. Yu's single-authored Management Science paper on accelerator's impact on hi-tech ventures has been widely cited. Sandy holds a Ph.D. in economics from New York University, a M.S. and a B.S. in electrical Engineering from Stanford University. Prior to academia, she worked at Microsoft, Toshiba, and Ooma.

2022

Abstract: The objective allocation of governmental funds is central to the vitality of the scientific enterprise. In this paper, I suggest that there exists a misalignment between currently used measures to assess a lab’s prior publication history (e.g., journal-impact-factor weighted publication count or JIFCount) and standard practice in financial accounting (e.g., Return on Assets). To examine this disparity, I develop a novel measure I call LabROA that captures the conversion of labor inputs into scientific output, and I operationalize this measure using data from MIT Biology. As predicted by financial accounting, I demonstrate that using JIFCount introduced biases that favor larger labs. Adoption of the LabROA measure would rectify this bias, while simultaneously retaining funding for large, high-performing labs. Lastly, I calculate that use of the LabROA measure would have reallocated more than 14 percent of NIH funding within MIT Biology. Extrapolated to the current NIH budget, which stands at $37 billion, adoption of the LabROA measure to assess laboratory performance could result in a substantive readjustment of the funding landscape.

Prof. Liu is an associate professor in the Department of Management, an Inman Research Scholar, and coordinator of the management PhD program at the Lundquist College of Business. His expertise includes spatial networks, firm innovation and productivity, and the organization of science. His research has been published in journals including the American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Strategic Management Journal, Organization Science, and Science.

Liu received his DBA in technology and operations management from Harvard University, a PhD in biology from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a BA in biology from Washington University, St. Louis. Prior to joining the Lundquist College, Liu taught at the University of Toronto. He cofounded PowerTen LLC, a boutique consulting firm headquartered in Turkey, and has also previously worked as a journalist.

Abstract: Considering the significant policy losses against bribery, it can appear as if organisational actors collectively conspire to keep bribe markets alive. Far from it, however, I will talk about how social incentives discourage organisational actors from sharing information about their bribe-taking exploits with each other. This tendency against disclosure makes it costly and difficult for them to coordinate on bribery. As a result, bribery is more likely to be unevenly distributed, uncoordinated, and no where near normalised inside organisations. I will talk about the theoretical, empirical, and policy implications of my findings for how we think about and address bribery inside organisations. In the first half of my talk, I will focus on how I collected data on bribery, a phenomenon that is hard-to-see and hard-to-document. The second half of Dr. Dakhlallah's talk will focus on the subject reflected in the title of her talk.

Prof. Dakhlallah received her PhD from Stanford University. She is an assistant professor of organizational behavior at the Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University. Her research crosses organisational theory, political economy, economic sociology, and global health. She is one of the very few scholars who combine in depth field work, survey methods, and field experimental methods to study how social incentives structure bribe markets. The findings of Dr. Dakhlallah's research has important implications for our theories of misconduct inside organisations and the policy interventions we design.

Abstract: Global patent litigation is highly concentrated in a handful of countries. This is surprising as litigation results are only binding in the country of litigation. This paper explores the strategic explanations behind such observations. We argue that litigation tends to be more concentrated when a firm’s main markets historically share similar litigation outcomes, so signals from one country can effectively deter competition in others. This is especially the case when the focal country is known for its experience in handling cases in certain technological categories. In that sense, the signaling effect shares the features of typical agglomeration effects: The more cases being litigated in a country, the more attractive the country becomes to litigating firms. We find supportive evidence from a sample of global infringement cases from 2005 to 2017.

Prof. Zhao's research examines the interactions between firm strategy and external environment in a global context. Her work on multinational innovation and intellectual property (IP) strategies has been published in top journals such as Management Science, Strategic Management Journal, and Journal of International Business Studies. Dr. Zhao won Best Paper Awards from both Strategic Management Society and the Academy of Management. She is also a frequent commentator on the current global business environment and China-related topics. Below please find the link, the title, and the abstract of the presentation.

Abstract: How can organizations structure their selection of innovation projects to reduce errors in the form of false positives (investments that should not have been made) and false negatives (investments that should have been made but were not)? Although simulations and case studies exist, our understanding of the effects of selection regimes on both types of errors has been limited due to a lack of decision and outcome data over a large set of projects. We use 121 interviews and secondary material from an accelerator targeting mobile application developers to understand how it implemented three different selection regimes over time, and map these to existing literature. We complement this with unique data of 3,580 innovation projects submitted to the accelerator where we collected the outcomes for both funded and rejected projects to measure false positives and false negatives at the project-level. Our findings suggest that despite efforts to improve selection regimes, there are remarkable similarities between them in the tendency to select false positives and false negatives. Considering differences in the pools of projects submitted for selection, as the accelerator strove to tighten the quality distribution in the last selection regime, our evidence suggests that they instead became more likely to make false positive and false negative decisions. This finding holds despite a range of different controls, and seems to align with the mechanism that the selectors focused too much on the team’s past track record in a process that is more random than they assumed.

Prof. Dahlander conducts research in innovation, entrepreneurship, and strategy. In his ongoing research, he investigates how new ideas and innovations are developed in networks and communities. The ongoing projects use large-scale analysis of networks, which he integrates with a deeper appreciation for what content flows through networks. His research has been published in the Academy of Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, Organization Science, Research Policy, and Strategic Management Journal among others. He was recognized as one of the Best 40 Under 40 Professors by Poets & Quants in 2017.

Abstract: We estimate the impact of changes in state minimum wage laws on demand for lab personnel and scientific productivity. Using an event study difference-in-differences framework and rich administrative data from the accounting records of thousands of labs at U.S. research universities,  we find  that  increased  labor  costs  matter  for  the  employment  of  trainee  research  assistants  and  staff  and  the  rate  and  direction  of  scientific  activity,  particularly  among labs  that  are  more  dependent  on  employing  low-wage workers. Our analysis demonstrates the need for insurance mechanisms or increased budget flexibility for PIs, particularly for universities seeking to provide undergraduates with research experience.

Prof. Ganguli earned her PhD in Public Policy from Harvard University. Her research is in the areas of labor economics, the economics of science and innovation, international development and economic history. Her work has been featured at Management Science, Strategic Management Journal, Review of Economics and Statistics, AEJ-Applied, The Journal of Labor Economics.

Prof. Wagner conducts research in the field of science and technology and its relationship to policy, society and innovation, with a particular focus on international collaboration. Her 2008 book, “The New Invisible College: Science for Development,” focused on using network concepts to diffuse knowledge and application of new ideas. She is a distinguished fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and an elected member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Abstract: Organizations tout the importance of innovation and entrepreneurship. Yet, it remains unclear how they evaluate entrepreneurial human capital—namely, job candidates with founder experience. Understanding how hiring firms evaluate this experience is important because it reveals insights into structures and processes within organizations. Organizations research points to two organizational perspectives related to the evaluation of founder experience: Former founders may be advantaged, due to founder experience signaling high-quality capabilities and human capital, or disadvantaged, due to concerns related to fit and commitment. To identify the dominant class of mechanisms driving the evaluation of founder experience, we posit that it is important to consider how these evaluations differ depending on whether the founder’s venture failed or succeeded. To understand the demand-side mechanisms and hold supply side factors constant, we conducted a field experiment. We sent applications varying the candidate’s founder experience to 2,400 software engineering positions in the U.S. at random.We find evidence of a founder disadvantage such that former founders received 43 percent fewer callbacks than non-founders. Furthermore, we find this disadvantage to be greater for former successful founders, who received 33 percent fewer callbacks than former failed founders, and that older firms drive this difference. Our results highlight that mechanisms related to concerns about fit and commitment, rather than information asymmetry about quality, are most influential for how hiring firms evaluate former founders in our context.

Prof. Botelho earned his Ph.D. from MIT Sloan. His research is in the areas of entrepreneurship, labor markets, organizational sociology, and strategy. One stream of his research focuses on the factors that contribute to bias and inequality in evaluation processes. His work has been featured at Management Science, Organization Science, and Administrative Science Quarterly. He was recognized by Poets & Quants  as Best 40 Under 40 Professors in 2020.

Abstract: Does local innovation attract venture capital? Using a regime change in the commercialization of university innovation in 1980 that strongly increased university incentives to patent and license discoveries, we document the complement to Kortum and Lerner (2000)’s finding that financing leads to future innovation. Because universities have different technological strengths, each local area surrounding a university experienced an increase in innovation relevant to particular sets of industries after 1980—industries which differ widely across university counties. Comparing industries within a county that were more versus less related to the local university’s innovative strengths, we show that venture capital dollars after 1980 flowed systematically towards geographic areas and industries with the greatest sudden influx of innovation from universities. In contrast, the geographic and industry distributions of corporate patenting and prior venture financing in the pre-period do not predict a differential increase in future venture financing, suggesting that our findings are not solely driven by the 1979 pension fund reform that increased financing available to VCs across the board. The results support the notion of a “virtuous cycle” wherein innovation serves to draw capital investment that then funds future innovation.d-side mechanisms and hold supply side factors constant, we conducted a field experiment. We sent applications varying the candidate’s founder experience to 2,400 software engineering positions in the U.S. at random.We find evidence of a founder disadvantage such that former founders received 43 percent fewer callbacks than non-founders. Furthermore, we find this disadvantage to be greater for former successful founders, who received 33 percent fewer callbacks than former failed founders, and that older firms drive this difference. Our results highlight that mechanisms related to concerns about fit and commitment, rather than information asymmetry about quality, are most influential for how hiring firms evaluate former founders in our context.

Prof. Fehder earned his Ph.D. from MIT Sloan. His research focuses on the emergence and evolution of entrepreneurial ecosystems and the growing role of entrepreneurship programs (e.g. accelerators, hackathons, pitch competitions, etc) in catalyzing these processes. His research has been featured at Science, Research Policy, AEA Papers and Proceedings, and Journal of Invasive Cardiology.

2021

Abstract: To gain the necessary resources and support to thrive and survive, firms usually craft their initial narratives to suggest future success rather than acknowledge the possibility of failure. However, failing to appropriately account for the possibility of innovation failure may have a detrimental effect. In the event of an innovation failure, the firm likely will face the need to reconcile its initial narrative with the failure occurrence. At the same time, raising the possibility of failure may lead external audiences to withhold or withdraw resources vital to the firm’s success, even before a failure materializes. By analyzing a case of catastrophic innovation failure at Virgin Galactic in the private space industry, we identify a tension inherent to the crafting of organizational narratives for innovating firms, between promising future success (which elicits external audiences’ support) and acknowledging the possibility of failure (which may initially deter them). Our findings indicate a need for innovating firms to proactively manage this tension between risk and promise into their external narratives even before the occurrence of catastrophic failures, balancing the potential of success with the possibility of failure.

Prof. Chai earned her Ph.D. in technology and operation management from Harvard University. Her current projects focus on understanding why breakthoughs are missed, the process by which researchers or teams of researchers in firms and universities conceive of commercially successful ideas, and the effect of twitter as well as the role of physical and virtual temporary colocation as vehicles for collaboration. Her work has been published in Organization Science, Strategic Management Journal, as well as Research Policy.