Fall 2009 Schedule
Mondays – 11:30-1 pm (E52-598)
|
Date |
Speaker (Affiliation) |
Title and Abstract |
|
Sep. 14th |
Michael
Cusumano (MIT Sloan and Engineering) |
Enduring Ideas in Strategy and Innovation |
|
Sep. 21st |
Steve
Kahl (Chicago GSB) |
CONCEPT,
COHERENCE, AND COHESION (with JoAnne Yates) Abstract: This paper explores why actors may develop different interpretations of a new concept. It leverages work from cognitive science to define this interpretive process in terms of creating coherence: fitting the new concept into the existing conceptual schema. We argue that variation in conceptualization results in part from cognitively cohering the concept in different ways. We appeal to the social structure of the group to explain this variance. Cohesive groups favor establishing similarities between the new concept and something familiar in the existing schema. Diffuse groups lack a clear, agreed-upon schema to hook a new concept into, and therefore favor making sense of the new concept without directly integrating it into the schema. We illustrate the relationship between social cohesion and cognitive practices by analyzing the different conceptualizations of the computer during its introduction in the insurance industry from 1940- 1960. |
|
Oct. 19th |
Toby
Stuart (HBS) |
Abstract: In innovative industries, private sector firms
increasingly are participants in open communities of science or technology.
As part of the norms of exchange and engagement in such communities, firms
often publicly disclose what would otherwise remain private discoveries. In a
quantitative case study of one firm in the biopharmaceutical sector, we
explore the consequences of scientific publication—an instance of public
disclosure—for a core set of activities within the firm. Specifically, we
link publications to human resource practices, finding in researcher-level, fixed effects regressions that bonuses are tied to
publications. Second, using a unique
electronic mail dataset, we show that researchers within the firm who author
publications are much better connected to external (to the firm) members of
the open scientific community. This result directly links publishing to
current understandings of firms’ absorptive capacity. Third, in an
unanticipated finding, our analysis raises the possibility that the firm’s
most prolific publisher begin to migrate to the periphery of the intra-firm
social network, which may occur because their strong external relationships
induce them to reorient their focus to a community of scientists beyond the
firm’s boundary. |
|
Oct. 26th |
Minyuan Zhao (U. of Michigan) |
tbd |
|
Nov 16th |
Benjamin Jones
(Kellogg, visiting Sloan) |
tbd |
|
Nov 30th |
Raghu Iyengar
(Wharton) |
tbd |
|
Dec 7th |
Erica Fuchs (Carnegie Mellon) |
tbd |
Seminar Organizers: Michaël Bikard, Phil Anderson
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