Center for Innovation Research

CIR pursues and propagates fundamental research on innovation with a focus on the strategic and organizational dynamics associated with innovation and learning at the organizational, intra-organizational, and inter-organizational levels.

CIR

2012 seminars


"MOTIVATIONS FOR VOLUNTARY PUBLIC R&D DISCLOSURES" by Myles Shaver , Carlson School of Management

Date: November 9, 2012
Time: 13:00 - 14:30
Location: PZ 7

Abstract

Firms have several plausible motivations to voluntarily and publicly disclose R&D information. By documenting the empirical facts, this paper highlights the importance of voluntary public R&D disclosure and guides more refined theoretical and empirical treatments of this phenomenon going forward. We conduct a set of multivariate analyses to better understand the nature of voluntary public disclosure. We demonstrate variation in disclosure across industries, firms, and within firms over time. We also find that firm R&D and financial characteristics correlate with disclosure. Of particular note is that increased disclosure tends to both precede and follow increased R&D discovery and efforts. These results indicate that disclosures represent more than noise or public relations efforts unrelated to firm R&D actions. Our efforts in demonstrating the systematic nature of voluntary R&D disclosure suggests it can have important implications for understanding sustainable competitive advantage and helps guide the agenda to advance and refine such insight.


"GARDEN PATHS AT THE EDGE OF LIFE: INTERORGANIZING OF COGNITION IN THE WEST NILE AND SIN NOMBRE VIRUS OUTBREAKS" by Huggy Rao of Stanford University

Date: June 15, 2012
Time: 12.45 - 14.15 hrs
Location: TZ 5

Abstract

When do centrally located experts in an interorganizational network suffer from confirmation bias? We argue that confirmation bias occurs when centrally located experts receive cues from proximal others, reject schema inconsistent cues from distant others, and are blind to meaning holes in the network. We propose this fallacy of expertise is corrected by distributed debugging in the network. We study the outbreak of two emerging viruses, West Nile and Sin Nombre, and ask why a confirmation bias occurred in the former but not the latter. Our comparative case studies suggest that the confirmation bias in networks is the outcome of social structure that narrows attention.


"EXTERNALITIES OF OPENNESS IN INNOVATION" by Jim Love of Aston Business School, Birmingham

Date: May 25, 2012
Time: 13.00 - 14.30 hrs
Location: DZ 3

Abstract

Discussion of open innovation has typically stressed the benefits to the individual enterprise from boundary-spanning linkages and improved internal knowledge sharing. In this paper we explore the potential for wider benefits from openness in innovation and argue that openness may itself generate positive externalities by enabling improved knowledge diffusion. The potential for these (positive) externalities suggests a divergence between the private and social returns to openness and the potential for a sub-optimal level of openness where this is determined purely by firms’ private returns. In other words without public intervention firms’ innovation strategies may be more ‘closed’ than the socially optimal level. Our analysis is based on Irish plant-level panel data from manufacturing industry over the period 1994 to 2008. Based on instrumental variables regression models our results suggest that externalities of openness in innovation are significant and that they are positively associated with firms’ innovation performance. We find that these externality effects are unlikely to work through their effect on the spread of open innovation practices. Instead, they appear to positively influence innovation outputs by either increasing knowledge diffusion or strengthening competition. Our evidence on the significance of externalities from openness in innovation provides a rationale for public policy aimed at promoting open innovation practices among firms.


"DISCLOSING MONETARY TERMS OF R&D ALLIANCE " by Ed Levitas of Sheldon B. Lubar School of Business, University of Wisconsin

Date: March 9, 2012
Time: 13.15 - 14.45
Location: DZ 4

Abstract

We examine biotechnology-pharmaceutical R&D alliance formation, and partners’ decisions to voluntarily disclose monetary terms of the alliance. We argue that (a) the biotech firm's stock price uncertainty (which reflects investors’ lack of consensus about firm value) positively impacts the likelihood of disclosure since uncertainty increases firms’ capital costs; (b) the biotech firm's cash-burn levels positively impacts the likelihood of disclosure since greater cash usage increases the need for external capital; and (c) cash-burn levels moderate the relationship between stock price uncertainty and the likelihood of disclosure as higher levels of cash-burn increase partners’ needs for external capital and (d) the pharma partner's market experience will also moderate the stock price uncertainty - likelihood of disclosure relationship. Empirical tests of 108 R&D alliances involving publicly traded US biopharmaceutical and their pharmaceutical partners support the impact of the stock price uncertainty-cash burn-third party endorsement part of our theory, but show now impact of competition-complementary assets interaction on willingness to disclose.