Knowledge that Transforms

How do platforms emerge in regulated, data-sensitive industries? Drawing on 82 interviews and archival data on UK retail banking from 2016 to 2024, we show that challenger banks build platforms easily but struggle to grow their user base, as data sensitivity and partial outsourcing of resource-intensive infrastructure create a self-reinforcing cycle of trust, resilience, and resource strain. Incumbents face the opposite problem: established user bases offer a network-effect advantage, yet legacy IT, compliance siloes, and cannibalization fears constrain ownership and curation. We show how platform-as-a-service providers emerge in response, but powerful incumbent buyers reverse the platform power asymmetry by forcing closed curation. We develop a theoretical framework with implications for other data-sensitive sectors such as healthcare and insurance.

We investigate whether financial innovation, specifically the use of foreign exchange (FX) derivative products, spurs firms’ technological innovation, measured with patent-based metrics. Using a quasi-exogenous shock that reduces the cost of using FX derivatives and varying FX equity exposure of firms, we find that increased utilization of FX derivatives results in higher patent production. The primary mechanism driving this relationship is the reduction in financial constraints and enhanced risk management. The effect is especially pronounced for firms facing difficulties in raising equity capital. Our results indicate that the use of FX derivatives boosts innovative output by improving firms’ ability to raise equity capital, thereby increasing R&D investment, rather than by increasing risk-taking.

This study shows how phase-out policies drive and support the adaptation of incumbent firms to technological change, drawing on evidence from the European automotive industry. Recent years have seen growing interest among academics and practitioners in policies aimed at phasing out unsustainable technologies. However, their implementation remains controversial because the effects on key actors—such as incumbent firms—remain poorly understood. To shed more light on this timely question, we conducted a qualitative case study to analyze how the recent EU-level decision effectively banning new registrations of internal combustion engine vehicles beginning in 2035 affects incumbent carmakers in their adaptation to technological change. We offer insights into the causal mechanisms through which phase-out policies affect incumbent adaptation and show how firm-level factors shape policy effectiveness. We demonstrate that phase-out policies can drive incumbent adaptation by redirecting attention, excluding technology trajectories, clarifying forecasts, and facilitating ecosystem coordination. This implies that such policies can effectively accelerate transitions and are less detrimental to incumbents than is often assumed. In fact, these measures represent an effective means of overcoming multiple internal and external sources of inertia, increasing incumbents’ likelihood of surviving technological change. However, firm-level factors—such as progress in adaptation, the coverage of heterogeneous markets, and perceived policy credibility—are both critical to policy effectiveness and linked to incumbents’ political interests and activities. In this regard, policymakers should take particular care in designing phase-out and complementary policies to ensure high credibility and to mitigate political resistance from incumbents.

The quality of research papers in business and management is frequently assessed in an automated fashion according to the rating of the journals in which they are published. Using a very large sample of research spanning all fields in business and management studies, we examine the extent to which the prevalence of country-specific journal ratings lists leads authors to focus on ratings, potentially at the expense of the academic influence and article fit of the resulting publication. We find that authors based in the UK or Australia publish disproportionately frequently in journals that have low impact factors within ratings categories measured using their country’s journal lists. We argue that such outcomes could have arisen in contexts where measured research performance is prioritised alongside publication in less competitive outlets. We show that this success is on average achieved at the expense of both fit to the journal and citations, which are sacrificed by publishing in lower-impact, higher-rated journals. We find no evidence, however, that work by Australian or UK authors who publish away from their core fields appears in higher rated journals. • Authors tend to publish in low-impact journals favoured by national rating lists. • Early-career researchers are more influenced by national journal lists. • Achieving high ratings on relevant national lists reduces fit and citations. • Higher-rated publications are not achieved by going outside authors’ home fields.

Applicants can predict before filing whether an invention will generate high early value flows, even within narrow technical fields. For United States patents with “priority” Chinese applications, an applicant's choice of Chinese utility model, granted faster but with shorter life than an invention patent, is a significant predictor of early value flow, as proxied by early post-grant citations. In our sample of Chinese - U.S. patent dyads, prior utility model choice significantly positively predicts four proxies for private value of the subsequent US patent: total forward citations, stock market value estimate at grant, litigation and reassignments, but also fewer patent renewals. Higher predicted patent value does not imply more persistent private value flow, falsifying an assumption crucial for estimation of substantial “option value” from patent renewal fees.

Organizational climate is seen as a key driver of organizational performance, including sustained innovation. However, there is limited work on the effects of climate duality on innovation. The co-existence of two distinct climate dimensions (duality) in an organization creates the potential for both generative and disruptive dualities. By dividing the innovation process into an idea generation stage and an innovation implementation stage, we develop a theory linking climate duality and the generative–disruptive dichotomy at each stage of the innovation process. In particular, we argue that climate duality should be generative at the idea stage and disruptive at the implementation stage. Using data from the 2018 Australian Public Service Employee Census ( N = 59,870), we test the distinct effects of climate duality at each stage. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these findings for theories of work climate and innovation. • Advance workplace climate research with a configurational approach examining interactions among multiple workplace climates • Theorize relationship between duality (co-existence of go-getter and inclusive climates) and stages of innovation process • Use Australian Public Service Employee Census to show climate duality benefits idea generation (a divergent process) • Find climate duality hinders implementation (a convergent process), revealing paradoxical effects on innovation • Extend theories of climate duality and innovation to public organizations, contributing to cross-sector understanding

Firms can govern their alliances through contractual agreements or equity joint ventures, the latter involving the shared ownership of a newly formed legal entity. This paper argues that the governance choice in a new alliance can be a lever for a firm to manage interdependencies in its alliance portfolio. We examine two related ideas. The first is that the choice of governance structure for a new alliance depends on the composition of a firm's alliance portfolio. The second is that this governance choice has implications for the nature of the firm's innovation outputs. Using data on U.S.-listed dedicated biotechnology firms, we find that firms are more likely to govern a new alliance through a contractual agreement when the accessed resources are similar to the resources available in their existing alliance portfolio. This choice also increases innovation in these similar resource domains. In contrast, firms are more likely to choose an equity joint venture when the accessed resources are complementary to their existing alliance portfolio, a choice that increases innovation in these complementary resource domains. Our findings extend the alliance-portfolio perspective by linking portfolio interdependencies to the governance choices in new alliances and their implications for innovation. • Firms use governance choice in new alliances to manage alliance portfolio interdependencies. • Contracts are preferred when accessing resources similar as in existing alliances. • Joint ventures are preferred when accessing resources complementary to existing alliances. • Governance choice influences the types of innovation outputs the firm achieves. • Contracts foster innovation in similar domains and JVs in complementary domains.

Recent years have seen a reorganisation of innovation production to favour groups of collaborators, and increasingly specialised individual inventors. In this paper I construct a panel of highly prolific inventors, whom I observe frequently throughout their career. I develop a simple setting whereby inventors face a trade-off between acquiring knowledge depth and knowledge breadth. Empirically, I provide suggestive evidence that after conditioning upon the selection of inventors into specialised careers in certain technological fields, specialisation is associated with a lower probability of contributing to a top-cited invention over the remainder of their career. This suggestive evidence is consistent with a mechanism where specialised inventors are vulnerable to knowledge obsolescence in the late stages of their career. The negative relationship between specialisation and highly cited inventions is concerning given the disproportionate value of such inventions to society. • I create a novel dataset on the careers of prolific inventors. • I integrate career cycle effects into the study of specialisation and productivity. • I develop a measure of specialisation at the inventor-field-year level. • I find specialisation is negatively linked to contributing to top-cited inventions. • I present evidence that this is consistent with a knowledge obsolescence mechanism.