Resumen de On the drivers of innovation: the role of organizational networks and failure
This dissertation focuses on two important but underexplored drivers for technological innovation, focusing on the role of a broker inventor and the impact of an innovation failure.
In the first study (second chapter), I examine a broker inventor's effect on her collaborators (or the brokered inventors). Despite the well-documented literature on the benefits of brokerage for a broker herself, our understanding of the broker's effect on her brokered inventors' innovation performance is limited. In the first study, exploiting unique data of inventors' unexpected death, I find evidence consistent with a "tertius gaudens" or exploitative broker in innovation: a broker deters her brokered inventors' potential collaborations to sustain her position as a broker, which makes her brokered inventors less innovative.
In the second study (third chapter), I examine a broker inventor's effect on her firm. If a broker inventor can obtain benefits from her network structure but have a negative impact on her collaborators, is a broker helpful or harmful for her firm's innovation performance? In this study, exploiting broker inventors' unexpected death, I find a negative effect of a broker on the firm. To explain this finding, I suggest a unique network-level mechanism, "networkfragmentation" upon a broker node exclusion: a broker inventor keeps a large intrafirm collaborative network from rewiring into smaller but more innovative network groups.
In the third study (fourth chapter), I study how an innovation failure shapes firm's innovationsearch behavior. Although innovation failures are inevitable and common, it remains unclear how an innovation failure changes a firm's subsequent innovation search. In this paper, I theorize that an innovation failure leads to higher innovation intensity when shareholders have lower monitoring ability on managerial behavior. By uniquely exploiting a late simultaneous patent application as an exogenous and impactful innovation failure, I find evidence consistent with my theory. This study tells that Thomas Edison's famous remark, "I have not failed 1,000 times--I've successfully found 1,000 ways that will not work," can be applied to well-governed firms.
