Innovation
What gets in the way of innovation? I look at this question from several angles in diverse settings. In the auto industry, big customers create obstacles for small suppliers; in the Sahara, a lack of hierarchy prevents technology adoption; and in open source software, charities perform less well than non-charitable projects.
"Dark Innovation Measurement and Strategy: Product, Process, and Invisible Innovation in the Automotive Supply Chain" (working paper, 2016)
In my paper with Dan Snow and Sue Helper, we use data from an original, nation-wide survey of the auto supply chain to measure a wider variety of innovative activity than R&D spending and patenting. We find that firms cluster into 3 innovation strategies in response to transaction cost concerns: a high-R&D group that sells to many automakers, a high-design cluster that commits to a single buyer with whom it works closely, and a low-innovation cluster that avoids transaction costs by not innovating much. We also uncover a problem that small firms have in exercising their patent rights vis-a-vis a big buyer. Finally, these clusters of suppliers figure prominently in outsourcing strategy, as Toyota's recent switch from Denso, a high-design firm, to Continental, a high-R&D firm, exemplifies.
"Hostages and the Emergence of Venture Capital" (working paper, 2016)
The importance of VC in financing innovation is undisputed. But as communities around the country and across the globe attempt to ignite an innovation economy, there is very little research on the origins of VC to guide these efforts. I examine the emergence of the venture capital industry and find evidence for the origins of two approaches to VC investing, a so-called West Coast style and an East Coast style, both of which are still in practice today.
"The political economy of technology adoption: The case of Saharan salt mining" (Extr. Ind. Soc., 2015)
I partner with anthropologist Sima Rombe-Shulman and engineer Dayo Shittu to understand technology adoption by studying a setting where there appears to be none for thousands of years. Miners in Taoudenni, Mali continue to use primitive technology, including wooden tools to extract salt and camels to transport it. We find that markets seem to function in our setting, but higher-level organization does not. This is more general than an exotic and extreme case might suggest, and sheds light on the understudied importance of hierarchy in innovation, technology adoption, entrepreneurship and economic development.
"Nonprofit Ownership: Insights from Open Source Software" (working paper, 2015)
In a head-to-head comparison of open source software projects, those that are written by its users for its users are higher-quality than their closed-source competitors, while open source programs written by charitably- or ideologically-motivated providers are lower-quality than their closed-source competitors. A theory of nonprofits explains the incentives, and this phenomenon applies beyond software to include phenomena such as Code for America, Facebook- designed routers or Google-designed servers whose designs are openly available.