7th Annual Technology Mini-Conference 

On April 20-21, 2007, the Mack Center co-hosted (with the Management Department) the Tech Mini-Conference, a very special annual event designed to encourage, cultivate and showcase exciting management research involving technological innovation.  Faculty presenters discussed their current research projects and shared working papers with a group of peers and senior faculty, who provided valuable input to their projects in progress.   

This year's presentations included 21 projects grouped in 7 categories: Technology Commercialization, Innovating By Learning from Errors, Innovating Via Organization and Network Design, System Performance and Innovation, Human Capital and innovation, Stakeholders' Reactions and Innovation, and Knowledge Flows and Innovation.  This year's event was organized by Wharton faculty members Gary Dushnitsky, David Hsu, and Anita Tucker.

 

Prof. George Day, Co-Director of the Mack Center, welcomed the scholars to the Wharton campus.  He observed that this year's presentations represent some of the strongest and most interesting research since the Tech Mini conference was started, almost a decade ago.  The impressive list of papers (see below) confirms his observation.  Presenters traveled here from he world's leading business schools to present their research in progress, for comment and discussion.  Prof. Day also expressed appreciation to the distinguished senior faculty discussants who traveled here to comment on the research presentations.

The agenda is included below - to see the papers presented, click on the title.

         Click here to view last year's (2006) conference papers  

2007 Tech Mini-Conference Agenda   

April 20-21, 2007  -  Jon M. Huntsman Hall - The Wharton School - Philadelphia

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(Note: Click on title of the paper to download papers)

Friday, April 20

11:00 - 11:15   Registration, Welcome (George Day, Wharton) and Introductions

11:15 - 12:30 pm   Technology Commercialization

Left to Right:  Presenters Henrik Bresman, Tim Simcoe, Rob Salomon; discussant Lori Rosenkopf

• Henrik Bresman, “Team Learning Strategies and Performance in Innovation Teams”

• Marc Rysman and Tim Simcoe, “Patents and the Performance of Voluntary Standard Setting Organizations”

• Rob Salomon and Xavier Martin, “Technology Transfer and Implementation Performance: A Study of ‘Time-to-Build’ in the Global Semiconductor Industry”

• Discusssant: Lori Rosenkopf (Wharton)

12:30 - 1:45  Lunch

Left to Right:  Presenters David Hoffman, Ranga Ramanujam, Eitan Naveh; discussant Amy Edmondson

1:45 - 3:00 pm  -  Innovating by Learning from Errors

• David Hofmann and Zhike Lei, “Dealing with Complexity and Uncertainty by Seeking Informal Consults: Investigating Nurses’ Peer-to-Peer Information Seeking”

• Ranga Ramanujam, Donna Keyser, Carl Sirio, and Debra Thompson “Inside the Black Box: The Use of Voluntary Reported Incident Data”

• Eitan Naveh, Tal Katz-Navon and Zvi Stern, “Medical Errors: The Effects of Learning”

• Discussant: Amy Edmondson (Harvard Business School)

3:00 - 3:30    Break

Left to Right:  Presenters Raul Chao, Jeho Lee, Kevin Boudreau; discussant Olav Sorenson

3:30 pm - 4:45  Innovating via Organization and Network Design

• Raul Chao, Stylianos Kavadias and Cheryl Gaimon, “Budget Creation and Control for Effective NPD Portfolio Management”

• Christina Fang, Jeho Lee and Melissa Schilling, “Exploration and Exploitation: The Influence of Subgroup Structure on Organizational Learning”

• Kevin Boudreau, “Too Many Complementors? Evidence on Software Developers”

• Discussant: Olav Sorenson (Toronto)

4:30-5:00pm    Break

Left to Right:  Presenters Xin Wang and John Gray; discussant Lawton (Rob) Burns

5:00 - 6:00 pm  System Performance and Innovation

• Xin Wang and Justin Ren, “Should Hospital Services be Regionalized? An Empirical Investigation of Hospital Volume and Operations Quality”

• John Gray, Aleda Roth and Brian Tomlin, “Quality Risk in Outsourcing: Evidence from the US Drug Industry”

• Discussant: R. Lawton Burns (Wharton) 

7:00 pm  Dinner & Informal Networking

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Saturday, April 21

     

Top left to right:  Presenters Lee Fleming (shown at far right with Mary Benner, Lori Rosenkopf and Nicolaj Siggelkow), and Andrew Toole; Bottom left to right: Pierre Azoulay, Robert Huckman; discussant Scott Stern

8:30 - 9:00 am   Breakfast

9:00 - 10:40 am  Human Capital and Innovation

• Matt Marx, Debbie Strumsky and Lee Fleming, “Noncompetes and Inventor Mobility: Specialists, Stars, and the Michigan Experiment”

• Andrew Toole and Dirk Czarnitzki, “Exploring the Relationship between Scientist Human Capital and Firm Performance: The Case of Biomedical Academic Entrepreneurship in the SBIR Program”

• Pierre Azoulay, Gustavo Manso, and Joshua Graff Zivin, “Incentives and Creativity: Evidence from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator Program”

• Robert Huckman and Daniel Snow, “The Effect of Varied Experience on Performance: Evidence from Cardiac Surgery”

• Discussant: Scott Stern (Kellogg)

10:40 - 11 am   Break

Left to Right:  Presenters Mary Benner and Sriram Thirumalai; discussant Harbir Singh.

11:00 - Noon    Stakeholders’ Reactions and Innovation

• Mary Benner, “Financial Market Reactions Following Technological Discontinuities: A Non-Event Study in Two Industries”

• Sriram Thirumalai and Kingshuk Sinha, “Product Recalls in the Medical Device Industry: An Econometric Analysis of the Costs of Poor Quality”

• Discussant: Harbir Singh (Wharton) 

Noon - 1 pm   Lunch

 

Left to Right:  Presenters Andrea Fosfuri, Jeff Macher, Mariko Sakakibara and Riitta Katila; Discussant Brian Silverman

1:00 - 3:00 pm   Knowledge Flows and Innovation

• Andrea Fosfuri, Marco Giarratana and Alessandra Luzzi, “The Penguin Has Entered the Building: The Commercialization of Open Source Software Products”

• Michael Leiblein and Jeffrey Macher, “Do Small Firms Benefit Less from Alliances than Large Firms? Evidence from the Semiconductor Industry”

• Mariko Sakakibara, “Assessing the Role of University Patent Rights: U.S.-Japan Comparison of University-Industry Knowledge Transfer”

• Riitta Katila and Eric Chen, “Effects of Search Timing on Product Innovation: The Value of Not Being in Sync”

• Discussant: Brian Silverman (Toronto) 

3:00 pm  -  Conference adjourns