Lori Rosenkopf

Thomas Klueter, Anindya Ghosh, Lori Rosenkopf (2024), Not in-sourced here! When does external technology sourcing yield familiar versus novel solutions?, Strategic Management Journal.

Abstract: Research Summary When established firms source technology from specialized technology firms, extant research has typically assumed that this in-sourced technology is novel. We test this assumption by modeling in-sourcing decisions using a problem-solution lens wherein firms choose from available external technological solutions to solve their market problems. Since the locus of identification, evaluation, and selection of external solutions remains internal to the firm's R&D personnel, we argue that they frequently prefer familiar over novel solutions. We identify two factors that help firms overcome this preference for familiarity: when top managers focus their attention on the market problem or when they receive feedback from unexpected failures to solve that problem. Our case control analysis of 715 in-sourced emerging technological solutions in the biopharmaceutical industry offers broad support to our theoretical framework. Managerial Summary Established firms are commonly advised to source novel technologies externally. Yet since this sourcing process is driven by in-house R&D personnel, we suggest that a firm's choice of external technology solutions may still tend toward familiar ones. We confirm this preference by examining in-sourcing events of emerging technological solutions by established firms in the biopharmaceutical industry. Despite this preference, we then show that increased top management attention toward a market problem and experiencing unexpected failures in bringing products to market catalyze a receptiveness to novel technological solutions. Our findings help managers in established firms recognize that their claims or intentions to seek novel technology are not always consistent with actual in-sourcing choices, and suggest when firms can overcome this tendency.

Valentina Assenova, Emilie Feldman, Lori Rosenkopf (Working), Conflicts of interest reduce the diffusion of microfinance.

Abstract: Existing studies on innovation diffusion in networks have established that the high network connectivity of “central” actors increases diffusion. However, this research has not accounted for the possibility that the multiple connections of central actors could generate conflicts of interest that impede diffusion. Using data from a prominent field experiment that revealed the usual association between the centrality of “community leaders” tasked with promoting microfinance and its subsequent diffusion, we document a negative relationship between leaders’ lending relationships and microfinance diffusion. That is, leaders who lend are less inclined to promote microfinance because doing so could compromise the returns from their lending relationships. Our analyses show that leaders with conflicts of interest are less effective conduits for innovation diffusion than their centrality might predict.

Ram Ranganathan, Anindya Ghosh, Lori Rosenkopf (2018), Competition-cooperation interplay during multi-firm technology coordination: The effect of firm heterogeneity on conflict and consensus in a technology standards organization, Strategic Management Journal, 39:3193-3221.

A. Ghosh, R. Ranganathan, Lori Rosenkopf (2016), The impact of context and model choice on the determinants of strategic alliance formation: Evidence from a staged replication study, Strategic Management Journal, 37:2204-2221.

A. Ghosh and Lori Rosenkopf (2015), Shrouded in structure: Challenges and opportunities for a friction-based view of network research, Organization Science, 26:622-631.

R. Ranganathan and Lori Rosenkopf (2014), Do ties really bind? The effect of knowledge and commercialization networks on opposition to standards, Academy of Management Journal, 57:515-540.

G. Dokko, A. Nigam, Lori Rosenkopf (2012), Keeping steady as she goes: A negotiated order perspective on technological evolution, Organization Studies, 33:681-703.

Abstract: A central idea in the theory of technology cycles is that social and political mechanisms are most important during the selection of a dominant design, and that eras of incremental change are socially uninteresting periods in which innovation is driven by technological momentum and elaboration of the dominant design. In this essay, we overturn the ontological assumption that social order is inherently stable, drawing on Anselm Strauss’s concept of negotiated order to analyze the persistence of a dominant design as a social accomplishment: an outcome of ongoing processes that reinforce or challenge a socially negotiated order. Thus, we shift focus from battles over standards to periods of normal innovation. We extend the technology cycles model to explain social dynamics in periods of incremental change, and to make predictions specifying how contextual conditions in standards-setting organizations affect social interaction, leading to reinforcement or challenge to a socio-technical order.

D. Lavie, J. Kang, Lori Rosenkopf (2011), Balancing exploration and exploitation within and across domains: Evaluation of performance implications in alliance portfolios, Organization Science, 22:1517-1538.

Abstract: Organizational research advocates that firms balance exploration and exploitation, yet it acknowledges inherent challenges in reconciling these opposing activities. To overcome these challenges, such research suggests that firms establish organizational separation between exploring and exploiting units or engage in temporal separation whereby they oscillate between exploration and exploitation over time. Nevertheless, these approaches entail resource allocation trade-offs and conflicting organizational routines, which may undermine organizational performance as firms seek to balance exploration and exploitation within a discrete field of organizational activity (i.e., domain). We posit that firms can overcome such impediments and enhance their performance if they explore in one domain while exploiting in another. Studying the alliance portfolios of software firms, we demonstrate that firms do not typically benefit from balancing exploration and exploitation within the function domain (technology versus marketing and production alliances) and structure domain (new versus prior partners). Nevertheless, firms that balance exploration and exploitation across these domains by engaging in research and development alliances while collaborating with their prior partners, or alternatively, by forming marketing and production alliances while seeking new partners, gain in profits and market value. Moreover, we reveal that increases in firm size that exacerbate resource allocation trade-offs and routine rigidity reinforce the benefits of balance across domains and the costs of balance within domains. Our domain separation approach offers new insights into how firms can benefit from balancing exploration and exploitation. What matters is not simply whether firms balance exploration and exploitation in their alliance formation decisions but the means by which they achieve such balance.

Lori Rosenkopf and Patia McGrath (2011), Advancing the Conceptualization and Operationalization of Novelty in Organizational Research, Organization Science, 22:1297-1311.

Abstract: The construct of novelty is an important primitive for theories of organization learning, strategic change, and innovation. The organizational pursuit of novelty is generally theorized as necessary for long-term organizational adaptation and survival yet variance increasing in the short term. We argue that the recent explosion of studies of exploration and exploitation tend to conceptualize and operationalize novelty quite narrowly. In contrast, we treat novelty as a multidimensional construct and discuss implications of this approach for future research.

G. Dokko and Lori Rosenkopf (2010), Social Capital for Hire? Mobility of Technical Professionals and Firm Influence in Wireless Standard Committees, Organization Science, 21:677-695.

Abstract: The movement of personnel between firms has been shown to have important implications for firms, yet there has been little direct investigation of the underlying mechanisms. We propose that in addition to their human capital, mobile individuals carry social capital, affecting the outcomes of the firms they join and leave by altering the patterns of interaction between firms. In this study, we examine how job mobility affects firm influence in a technical standards setting committee for U.S. wireless telecommunications. We hypothesize and find that hiring individuals who are richer in social capital increases firm influence in technical standards setting committees by increasing the hiring firm’s social capital. We also find the benefits of hiring social capital are attenuated when an interfirm relationship is maintained by multiple individuals. In contrast, we find that the loss of personnel does not affect a firm’s social capital or influence over standards directly but that it does have an effect on firm social capital and influence contingent on changes in the firm’s business strategy. In advancing these arguments, we address the broader question of individuals as carriers of social capital and the conditions under which interpersonal connections are appropriable by firms.