Preeta M. Banerjee

FRUGAL INNOVATION CORE COMPETENCIES TO ADDRESS GLOBAL SUSTAINABILITY

The call for global sustainability is echoed by societal, environmental, and economic needs across the globe. In answering this call, a design innovation process that properly considers the needs and context of citizens in the developing world is necessary in order to develop appropriate, adaptable, affordable, and accessible solutions, products and services. This process, called “Frugal Innovation,” is rapidly becoming a standard against which sustainable solutions are assessed. Through an exploration of Frugal Innovation Core Competencies (Frugal Innovation Lab, Santa Clara University), and corresponding case studies of field solutions, a model is presented to begin sustainably addressing global human needs.

Resetting the Shot Clock The Effect of Comobility on Human Capital

In this paper, we examine how employee mobility impacts the human capital of both those who are new to the organization (movers) and those who are existing members (incumbents). Employee mobility events can disrupt both the location-specific and the colleague-specific components of human capital and thus have different impacts on overall human capital. We test our theory on the disparate effects of location change and personnel change on human capital in the highly interdependent context of the National Basketball Association. We find that movers experience adverse performance shocks after mobility events that are moderated when moving as a group, and we also find that group mobility events hinder the performance improvement of incumbents. Our findings are consistent with the limited transfer of location-specific human capital and the disruption of colleague-specific human capital after mobility events.

Sustainable human capital: product innovation and employee partnerships in technology firms

Purpose – To date, sustainability in technology firms has focused on improving outputs while maintaining the same inputs. The purpose of this paper is to propose a six‐stage model for enhancing inputs as well as outputs, named sustainable human capital. The paper extends traditional views of individuals as human capital, measured as formal education and direct experience to incorporate more holistic and humanistic views of informal education and indirectly related experience. This allows technology firms, whose lifeblood is innovation, to increase employee satisfaction and performance, quality and quantity of technology firm innovation, and societal well‐being in the form of sustainable products and services.Design/methodology/approach – This paper extends concepts in innovation management to build a holistic model of employees as sustainable human capital. By bridging theory and practice, this paper provides a framework for knowledge‐building partnerships and, thus, relational wealth, or the value create...

Globally Radical Technologies and Locally Radical Technologies: The Role of Audiences in the Construction of Innovative Impact in Biotechnology

We argue that the decision of inventors to build upon a pioneering technology is a function not just of technical merit but also of social forces. The identification of technological predecessors in the patenting process (i.e., prior art) goes beyond merely delineating legal boundaries of a technological claim; the act, we posit, also provides a roadmap for potential inventors to follow. Thus, in technologies where such a roadmap does not exist (i.e., “new to the world” technologies), innovative impact is stifled as compared to technologies where such roadmaps are preserved (i.e., “new to the firm” technologies). To build our story, we distinguish between two types of radical technologies-globally radical technologies (GRTs) and locally radical technologies (LRTs)-and juxtapose them in an exploration of the technologys cumulative impact of entrepreneurial firm invention. Results from a negative binomial regression analysis of inventions in the U.S.-based biotechnology industry show that LRTs are far more likely to be cited in the long run than GRTs, as hypothesized.

Knowledge complementarities: human capital management and R&D investment in high-technology firms

This paper explores complementarities between human capital management strategies and Research and Development (R&D) strategies in high-technology firms. Using data on a large sample of electronics firms in seven states from an employer–employee matched dataset, we examine the relationship between firm-level R&D and firms’ human capital strategies. Our results indicate that firms with high R&D investment are more likely to implement externally focused human capital strategies, while firms with low R&D investment are more likely to implement internally focused human capital strategies. Further, firms that adopt both high R&D investment and an externally focused human capital management strategy show higher productivity than comparable firms that implement an internally focused strategy. Our findings provide evidence of complementarities between firm R&D and the absorption of knowledge embedded in externally sourced individual human capital.

The improvement trajectory of PCR DNA replication and ERP software as general purpose technologies: an exploratory study of ‘anchor technologies’

ABSTRACT As an effort to peek into the black box of large-scale general purpose technologies (GPTs) like biotechnology and information technology, we develop the concept of ‘anchor technologies’. An anchor technology is a core technology of a large-scale GPT (‘mega-GPT’) that opens a new era in the development and diffusion of the mega-GPT. We trace the historical evolution of two process-based, yet otherwise very different, anchor technologies: enterprise resource planning (ERP) software within the mega-GPT of information technology and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) DNA replication within the mega-GPT of biotechnology. The case studies reveal the utility of ‘productisation’ as an important means of commercialising innovations in anchor technologies; more generally, the interplay between improvement in process-based technologies and in complementary product-based technologies provides insight into how ERP and PCR were able to sustain a path of continued improvement within their respective mega-GPT.

Financing as mother's milk for international biotechnology start-ups

This paper uses interviews of biotechnology investors and entrepreneurs to investigate the role of four investor types and eight financing vehicles across four stages of firm evolution. The choice of financing vehicle can have a differential impact on speed to market, control of direction, degree of technological risk, and capability development. This framework will be helpful for entrepreneurs, policymakers, academics and the international trade community in anticipating the impact of financing on firm and technology development – particularly as biotechnology firms are developing the next generation of drugs, therapeutics, devices, tools and diagnostics for curing human disease.

Geographical media reputation and technology entrepreneurship

Purpose - Geographical location has been of noted importance for technology entrepreneurship, i.e. technology clusters. While social resources have been investigated as strategic in management literature, media reputation appears to be an overlooked reason why technological entrepreneurship has been less prevalent in some geographical locations, despite there being fertile economic parameters. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach - Utilizing methodology developed by Rindova Findings - Geographical media reputation is contextualized and does not transfer readily. Unlike the absolute positives of economic reasoning, positive media reputation in the local context does not scale globally. Also, negative reputation is very hard to overturn at the global level. Social resources often have their own social dynamics that are localized in culture and environment. Research limitations/implications - This paper is an exploratory, illustrative analysis of the relation between geographical reputation at local and global levels and the location choice of technology entrepreneurship. Other factors do exist that the paper does not examine specifically but tries to match through sample selection, realizing no two geographical locations can ever be exact matches and in this case are rough equivalents. Originality/value - Geographical location imputes social resources – namely media reputation – that can affect the location choice of technology entrepreneurship beyond economic considerations.