Aiming at Targets: The Autobiography of Robert C. Seamans, Jr.

Bob Seamans originally was inspired to write this book for his family and friends. That is a large audience. By his own count his immediate family numbers twenty-four, not counting brothers and cousins and their families. His friends are uncounted but surely run to hundreds. As one of them and as a colleague at NASA, I am pleased and honored that he asked me to write this foreword. While written in Bob's unique and informal style, this autobiography has significance for many readers beyond his large circles of family and friends. Leaders and students of large, complex technological endeavors should be able to learn much from reading how Bob faced the daunting technical and management challenges in his career. As the title of this book implies, Bob has always set high goals for himself and then kept his eyes focused on both the necessary details and the broader picture. His ability to shift smoothly among jobs that required seemingly disparate abilities and skills speaks volumes about his insight, dedication, and enthusiasm for achievement. The book spans a truly remarkable life story. Bob first takes us through his growing up, education, and early professional and family life. Next he focuses on the crucial years when he was the general manager of NASA. Then he moves on to his career in the top jobs at the Air Force, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Energy Research and Development Administration. Finally, he touches on his later leadership activities in the academic and business worlds. Aiming at Targets is a series of fascinating topical vignettes covering his professional life. Taken together, like broad brushstrokes in an impressionist painting, they give a better picture of Bob Seamans and his work than a detailed recitation of facts and dates could hope to do. This is a cheerful account of an interesting and successful career. The book is full of good stories, with many memorable characters. Like the proverbial sundial, it counts the sunny hours. It is a good read. But it has its serious side. Bob's career wasn't all fun. The Apollo 204 fire, which killed three astronauts, was a terrible climax to his time at NASA. As one who lived through those days with him, I can recall the trauma and special sense of responsibility he felt. His account of this period and of the sad deterioration of his relationship with his boss, Jim Webb, is both fair and generous. Those were not happy times, but they should not be allowed to overshadow the fact that in his seven years at NASA, Bob Seamans led the agency to its first successes and laid the groundwork for the great successes that came later

Pricing and Multi-Market Contact in the Cable TV Industry

This paper links empirical literature on the use of price as an entry deterring mechanism with literature on the effect of multi-market contact on competition. The analysis uses a dataset of cable TV system prices to provide evidence that incumbent cable TV firms use price to deter entry by telecom overbuilders as well as cities with municipal utilities. There is also some evidence that multi-market contact with telecom overbuilders results in lower prices. However, there is no evidence that incumbents use price to deter cable overbuilders. In addition to linking entry deterrence with multi-market contact, this study has two other unique features. First, it establishes entry deterrence using two techniques, one of which relies on theory by Ellison and Ellison (2008) on non-monotonic price decreases in response to entry probability. Second, it uses detailed price and channel data at the service tier level

Technology adoption and innovation: The establishment of airmail and aviation innovation in the United States, 1918–1935

RESEARCH SUMMARY: This article explores how technology adoption can shape innovative activity. We study this issue within the historical context of the introduction and expansion of airmail across the United States between 1918 and 1935 using archival material and a novel dataset of early 20th century patents. A joint qualitative and quantitative investigation indicates that local individual and corporate actors applied diverse pools of knowledge and intensified their work with aviation innovations following airmail entry into their county. Moreover, we find evidence that the co‐location of aircraft manufacturing and airmail operations was associated with more corporate innovations that facilitated economies of scale and corresponded to increased technological diversification of firms' aviation patent portfolios. Ultimately, this paper deepens our understanding of the antecedents, consequences, and organizational processes that underpin innovation. MANAGERIAL SUMMARY: This research investigates how aviation innovation in the United States was influenced by the postal service's early 20th century introduction and expansion of airmail routes. Our results indicate that counties with an airmail route experienced increased aviation‐related patenting by individual and corporate inventors relative to similar counties that did not receive an airmail route. Moreover, we find that corporate inventors working in airmail counties that also contained aircraft manufacturers were particularly active in technological areas that enhanced aircraft economies of scale and patented in a wider range of aviation‐related domains. An implication of this work for managers and policymakers is that early access to nascent technology can be a driver of local innovation and that spillovers can benefit diverse economic actors working in close proximity

The Role of Data for AI Startup Growth

Artificial intelligence (“AI”)-enabled products are expected to drive economic growth. Training data are important for firms developing AI-enabled products; without training data, firms cannot develop or refine their algorithms. This is particularly the case for AI startups developing new algorithms and products. However, there is no consensus in the literature on which aspects of training data are most important. Using unique survey data of AI startups, we find that startups with access to proprietary training data are more likely to acquire venture capital funding

Use of Criminal Pleas in Aid of Private Antitrust Actions

Few fields of law have experienced a more dramatic pace of development in recent years than has that of the private antitrust action. After several decades of relative quiescence, the action for treble damages has grown in significance as an antitrust enforcement device at a rapidly accelerating rate since World War 11. Especially since the advent of the multitude of Electrical Industry Antitrust Cases in 1960, such private antitrust litigation has occupied a large segment of the time and effort of many judges and of many more lawyers throughout the country. Although few have come to trial, 3 this set of cases has already produced procedural innovations 4 and preliminary rulings which will be major factors in structuring the future course of antitrust litigation. Perhaps of even greater importance, however, is the fact that the mere filing and costly preparation of more than eighteen hundred such actions has created an acute awareness among the business community and the Bar of the possibilities and the threat which the treble damage claim may represent

The Business of AI Startups

New machine learning techniques have led to an acceleration of “artificial intelligence” (AI). Numerous papers have projected substantial job losses based on assessments of technical feasibility. But what is the actual impact? This paper reports on a survey of commercial AI startups, documenting rich detail about their businesses and their impacts on their customers. These firms report benefits of AI that are more often about enhancing human capabilities than replacing them. Their applications more often increase professional, managerial, and marketing jobs and decrease manual, clerical, and frontline service jobs. These startups sell to firms of different sizes, in different industries and nations, but the distribution of activity is distinct from that of larger firms. Firms serving EU customers appear to use higher levels of data protection

Technology Shocks in Multi-Sided Markets: The Impact of Craigslist on Local Newspapers

Theories of multi-sided markets suggest that a platform's pricing strategies on different sides of the market are closely linked, and in particular, an increase in competition on one side may lead to an increase in price on other sides. We empirically examine platforms' pricing strategies by exploiting the gradual expansion of Craigslist, a website providing classified ads services, into local newspaper markets. We adopt a differences-in-differences approach by comparing the pricing strategies of local newspapers for which classified ads are likely to be a significant portion of their revenue to others before and after Craigslist's entry. We find that these newspapers drop their classified ad rates significantly more after Craigslist's entry. We also find that the impact of the entry of Craigslist propagates to other sides of the newspaper market. These newspapers increase their subscription rates relative to others, and consequently, their circulation also drops more. Finally, lower circulation also leads to lower display ad rates for these newspapers. Our study helps build an understanding of how incumbent media platforms respond to technologically disruptive entrants in multi-sided markets

The interplay between data-driven decision-making and digitalization: A firm-level survey of the Italian and U.S. automotive industries

With the diffusion of information systems and new technologies for the real-time capturing of data, especially in rapid technological and managerial innovation contexts such as the automotive industry, data-driven decision-making (DDM) has now the potential to generate dramatic improvements in the performance of manufacturing firms. However, there is still a lack of evidence in literature on whether these technologies can actually enhance the effectiveness of data-driven approaches. The aim of this article is to investigate the impact of DDM on operational performance moderated by two main dimensions of digitalization: data integration and the breadth of new digitization technologies. The results of a cross-country survey of 138 Italian and U.S. auto-supplier firms, which was supported by plant visits and interviews, suggest that an interplay between DDM and the two dimensions exists. Higher degrees of data integration in information systems increase the positive effect of DDM on the probability of cost reductions. On the other hand, introducing multiple emerging digitization technologies leads to worse DDM results, in terms of cost performance. The conclusion that can be drawn is that the operational employees of auto-supplier firms are now facing difficulties in successfully combining real-time operational data from various sources and in exploiting them for decision-making. Managers and workers need to align their intuition, experience and analytical capabilities to initiate the digitalization process. The challenge, in the medium term, is to limit the difficulties of implementing new digitization technologies and integrating their data, to embrace DDM and fully grasp the potential of data analytics in operations

The Role of Ethical Principles in AI Startups

Do high-tech startups benefit from developing more ethical AI? AI startups implement policies and take actions to manage ethical issues associated with data collection, storage, and usage and adapt to the norms of their industry. This paper describes these startups\u27 ethics-related actions, including ethical AI policy adoption, and examines how these actions relate to startup performance. We find that merely adopting an ethical AI policy (i.e., a less costly signal) does not relate to increased performance. However, there is evidence that investors reward startups that take more costly preventative pro-ethics actions, like seeking expert guidance, training employees about unconscious bias, and hiring certain types of programmers. We use signaling theory to interpret these results, which suggest that ethical AI policies are a low-cost signal of quality to investors