Yansong Hu

Managing quality and network effects in the high-tech market : the case of research and development tools in life science industry

We seek to extend current theory on research and development (R&D) tools and create new insights by adopting a multi-disciplinary approach and drawing from literatures on quality and network effects in the high-tech market. More specifically, we use a unified framework on quality and network effects, and examine two forms of quality effects (third party quality reviews and company-advertised quality) and two types of network effects (network externalities effect and social network effect) in driving the popularity and success of R&D tools. By tracking two categories of R&D tools in the life science industry for a decade, our research provides a sharper understanding of R&D tools and therefore can help R&D tool producers to accelerate the market acceptance of their new tools, which should promote faster innovation and ultimately benefit the whole R&D community.

Global Diffusion of a Radical Innovation in Life Science Research: A Longitudinal Study on Adopter Networks

With the advent of connected customers, accelerating market acceptance of new products and services requires better understanding of the social networks that increasingly mediate this process. Under such context of a connected world, this study explores innovation diffusion in nascent industrial fields from a complex system and network perspective. In particular, given the growing importance of research toolkits in the biotechnology industry, we examined the emerging toolkit adopter networks and roles of knowledge broker (Hargadon & Sutton 2000) in the diffusion process of twenty four toolkits based on data extracted from over twenty thousand scientific papers and patents. Specifically, we addressed the following questions: Are there any structural differences between the adopter networks of successful diffusion and those of failure? How does the existence of knowledge brokers vary between them? What are the characteristics of knowledge brokers? Do successful toolkits diffuse in small world? What are the strategic implications? The finding suggests that networks of successful toolkit diffusion present small world characteristics. Furthermore, the result also implies that knowledge brokers are critical actors facilitating innovation diffusion.