Veranstaltungen

Max-Planck-Institut für Innovation und Wettbewerb, München, Raum 313

Boundary-spanners in networks have been shown to be in a privileged position to generate innovation outcomes, yet it is unclear how individuals seeking to leverage that position decide which contacts to rely on and when. This paper analyzes how individuals with dedicated boundary-spanning roles between industry and academia draw on their network resources to perform their jobs. Using an experiment-based setup we test how personality and cognition inform boundary-spanners’ decisions whether to rely on academic or industry contacts in their network in different situations. We predict that individual identification as an academic (industry) researcher will generally lead them to rely on academic (industry) contacts regardless of whether the input sought is of academic or industry nature, whereas individuals with high self-monitoring orientation would be more likely to match reliance on academic (industry) contacts to academic (industry) problems. The experimental design seeks to disentangle to what extent differences in network choices are rooted in individual cognitive ability to recall – i.e. “activate” – the full breadth of potential contacts or more deliberate behavioural preferences to “mobilize” certain contacts over others.

Ansprechpartner: Felix Poege

Max-Planck-Institut für Innovation und Wettbewerb, München, Raum 313

This paper uses a rich panel data set of Indian manufacturing firms to analyze the effects of domestic and international acquisitions on various outcomes at target firm and product level. We apply recent methodological advances in the estimation of production functions together with information on prices and quantities to estimate physical productivity, markups, marginal costs and proxies for product quality.

Using a propensity score reweighting estimator, we find that acquisitions are associated with increases in quantities and markups and lower marginal costs on average. These changes are most pronounced if acquirers are located in technologically advanced countries. We also provide evidence that the quality of products increases while quality-adjusted prices fall upon acquisitions. Our results indicate that technology transfer from foreign acquirers to domestic firms, predicted by theories of multinational firms, can materialize in both cost- and quality-based gains and benefit both firms and consumers.

Ansprechpartner: Felix Poege

Max-Planck-Institut für Innovation und Wettbewerb, München, Raum 313

The aim of this study is to analyze the effect of a decision weakening patents in light of the arguments made by stakeholders during the policymaking process. We show that the common belief that weaker patents lead to fewer innovations is wrong, while accounting for the heterogeneous patent-related strategies. Using a unique dataset on the entire population of French firms over 1995-2010 matched with their patents, we propose a cleaner test compared to previous literature using a measure closer to the concept of patenting propensity and a novel empirical approach. The arguments made by the Supreme Court and Amici in court documents show that the policy objectives are partially attained. While large firms in complex products industries reduce preemptive patenting, other firms use patents less as an appropriation mechanisms. Nevertheless, innovative activities remain high overall, due to the availability of alternative appropriation mechanisms and the spillovers allowed by weaker patents.

Ansprechpartner: Dr. Fabian Gaessler

Moderation: Jörg Hoffmann

Max-Planck-Institut für Innovation und Wettbewerb, München, Raum E10

Max-Planck-Institut für Innovation und Wettbewerb, München, Raum 101

When preparing a research article, academics engage in informal intellectual collaboration by asking other academics for feedback, which gives rise to a social network. We study whether informal intellectual collaboration with an academic who is more central in this social network results in a research article having higher scientific impact. To identify the effect of centrality changes of the most central commenter acknowledged on an article, we exploit deaths of scholars occurring somewhere in the network. We show that citation count increases by 1 citation if the most central commenter on the average article increases her Bonacich centrality by 2%. The effect is mediated by a decay in importance of more distance connections and robust to different network definitions.
To illustrate our results, we develop a structural model in which a positive externality from intellectual collaboration implies that collaborating with a more central colleague results in larger scientific impact of the research article.

Ansprechpartner: Dr. Fabian Gaessler

Moderation: Michael Neumann

Max-Planck-Institut für Innovation und Wettbewerb, München, Raum 101

Max-Planck-Institut für Innovation und Wettbewerb, München, Raum 313

In this paper, we begin with a review of the venture capital (VC) literature. We then briefly present mixed methods research, which combines quantitative and qualitative data and exploratory and confirmatory analysis in one study, and an illustrative study on VC learning. We then suggest mixed methods-related directions for future VC research, addressing gaps in the relational, learning, and related aspects under research stream, and presenting a cross-disciplinary mixed methods-related approach. Lastly, we provide a short critical discussion on both methods and research practices. In doing so, we hope to stimulate entrepreneurship scholars’ interest in these underutilized methods.

Ansprechpartner: Dr. Fabian Gaessler

Max-Planck-Institut für Innovation und Wettbewerb, München, Raum 313

We explore how firms frame catastrophic innovation failure for external audiences. Failure events may lead external audiences to doubt the firm’s ultimate chances of success. Because it is difficult for those audiences to ascertain whether the failure occurred due to the uncertainty inherent to innovation (experimentation uncertainty) or due to managerial or organizational shortcomings (execution uncertainty), a firm’s own framing of the failure may critically influence external audiences’ interpretations. We analyze three cases of catastrophic innovation failure at two firms in the private space industry - SpaceX and Virgin Galactic—using market-facing communications, including social media, blogs, corporate websites, press releases, and news articles. We find that firms frame catastrophic innovation failure considering

(1) the extent to which they incorporated the notion of failure into their external narrative prior to the failure, and

(2) the nature of the catastrophic event itself. We identify a tension inherent to the crafting of organizational narratives for innovating firms, between promising success (which elicits external audiences’ support) and acknowledging the possibility of failure (which may deter them). Our findings indicate a need for innovating firms to weave a sense of ‘optimal promise’ into their external narratives, balancing the zeal of success with the possibility of failure.

Ansprechpartner: Zhaoxin Pu

Max-Planck-Institut für Innovation und Wettbewerb, München, Raum 313

This paper investigates how a major mental disorder - bipolar disorder - affects people’s careers. Individual-level registry data for the population of Denmark allows us examine variation in mental health diagnoses, prescriptions, and earnings for 2.5 million people born between 1946 and 1975. These data show that people with bipolar disorder earn 32 percent less than the overall population and 36 percent less than their siblings. To examine the effects of mental health treatments, we exploit the introduction of lithium as a targeted treatment for bipolar disorder in 1976. Baseline difference-in-differences regressions compare career penalties of mental disorder for people who had access to treatment when they turned 20 with people who did not have access. OLS estimates indicate that access to treatment led to a 30 percent reduction in the earnings penalty (from 32 to 22 percent). A major policy concern is that mental health disorders – and differential access to treatment – may exacerbate inequality. To investigate this issue, we estimate differential effects of bipolar disorder and access to treatment across the earnings distribution. This analysis reveals a dramatic differential effect of mental health – and treatments – on low end of the earnings distribution. In the lowest 10 percent of the earnings distribution, people with bipolar disorder earn 82 percent less than the overall population. Access to treatment closes this gap almost completely, by 89 percent (from 82 to 73 percent).

Ansprechpartner: Zhaoxin Pu