The Impact of Information Technology on Scientists' Productivity, Quality and Collaboration Patterns

This study advances the prior literature concerning the impact of information technology on productivity in academe in two important ways. First, it utilizes a dataset that combines information on the diffusion of two noteworthy and early innovations in IT -- BITNET and the Domain Name System (DNS) -- with career history data on research-active life scientists. This research design allows for proper identification of the availability of access to IT as well as a means to directly identify causal effects. Second, the fine-grained nature of the data set allows for an investigation of three publishing outcomes: counts, quality, and co-authorship. Our analysis of a random sample of 3,771 research-active life scientists from 430 U.S. institutions over a 25-year period supports the hypothesis of a differential return to IT across subgroups of the scientific labor force. Women scientists, early-to-mid-career scientists, and those employed by mid-to-lower-tier institutions benefit from access to IT in terms of overall research output and an increase in the number of new co-authors they work with. Early-career scientists and those in top-tier institutions gain in terms of research quality when IT becomes available at their campuses.

The Impact of Founders' Professional-Education Background on the Adoption of Open Science by For-Profit Biotechnology Firms

This paper investigates the effect of founders' professional-education background on the adoption of an open-science technology strategy, using a sample of 512 young biotechnology firms. After controlling for founders' prior work experience and other organizational and environmental factors, I find that firms with proportionally more Ph.D.-holding entrepreneurs on the founding team have a higher probability of adopting open science. In addition, founders' educational background can mitigate the constraint of organizational environments on strategy. A crowded technological niche provides a more challenging environment for firms to implement open science, due to higher scooping risks. The deterrent effect, however, of such a high-risk environment is smaller among firms founded by proportionally more Ph.D.-holding entrepreneurs. There is also some evidence of a stronger effect of founders' educational background on open science in an institutional environment in which open science has yet to become the industry norm. This finding is consistent with and complements the growing body of research that emphasizes the importance of entrepreneurial background in developing knowledge about new-venture strategy and structure. This paper was accepted by Olav Sorenson, organizations.entrepreneurship, founder background, professional education, open science, diffusion of innovation, TMT

Compensation Structure and the Creation of Exploratory Knowledge in Technology Firms

Given the importance of exploration in a firm’s overall innovation program, scholars have sought to understand organizational factors that give rise to exploration-oriented innovations. We propose theory and empirical evidence that relates firms’ use of financial incentives to their exploratory innovation performance. We expect that a larger proportion of long-term incentives in R&D employee compensation should be positively associated with the creation of exploratory innovation in a firm. In addition, we propose that a higher level of horizontal pay dispersion is negatively associated with the creation of exploratory innovation. We examine innovations reflected in the patents of a unique six-year, unbalanced panel dataset of 94 high-technology firms in the U.S. Empirical results confirm that firms with high level of horizontal pay dispersion have less exploratory patent innovations. However, surprisingly, firms that pay their R&D employees a higher proportion of long-term financial incentives in total compensation have lower level of exploratory innovation. This implies the possibility that popular longterm incentive plans in high-technology sectors (e.g., stock option plans) have failed to achieve their intended goals in practice. We discuss factors that might moderate the negative impact of long-term incentives on exploratory innovation

Compensation Structure and the Creation of Exploratory Knowledge in Technology Firms

Given the importance of exploration in a firm’s overall innovation program, scholars have sought to understand organizational factors that give rise to exploration-oriented innovations. We propose theory and empirical evidence that relates firms’ use of financial incentives to their exploratory innovation performance. We expect that a larger proportion of long-term incentives in R&D employee compensation should be positively associated with the creation of exploratory innovation in a firm. In addition, we propose that a higher level of horizontal pay dispersion is negatively associated with the creation of exploratory innovation. We examine innovations reflected in the patents of a unique six-year, unbalanced panel dataset of 94 high-technology firms in the U.S. Empirical results confirm that firms with high level of horizontal pay dispersion have less exploratory patent innovations. However, surprisingly, firms that pay their R&D employees a higher proportion of long-term financial incentives in total compensation have lower level of exploratory innovation. This implies the possibility that popular longterm incentive plans in high-technology sectors (e.g., stock option plans) have failed to achieve their intended goals in practice. We discuss factors that might moderate the negative impact of long-term incentives on exploratory innovation