Publication records

Prior research suggests that patents by mobile inventors are at higher risk of generating spillovers between departed and hiring firms. Despite extensive research on how inter-firm inventor mobility affects firms' learning and innovation, little is known about how firms protect their existing intellectual property in the face of inter-firm inventor mobility. We argue that one main way in which firms try to prevent others from appropriating the value of these inventions is by extending the validity of mobile inventors' patents. We derive a set of hypotheses consistent with this argument and test them using longitudinal data on four major American semiconductor firms. Our analyses show that, as hypothesized, both departed and hiring firms are more likely to extend the validity of mobile inventors' patents than is the case for the patents of other, non-mobile inventors. Furthermore, in line with the view that firms use patent renewal to deter other firms from appropriating mobile inventors' knowledge, we find this effect to be stronger where the risks of spillovers are most intense. Our findings extend prior literature by explicating the role of patent renewal as a strategic deterrent against intellectual property appropriation in the face of inter-firm inventor mobility.

With permission of Emerald

For more than a year, EU member states have been debating whether and how to restrict the participation of the Chinese technology group Huawei in the expansion of their 5G mobile networks. Caught between its two main trading partners, the US and China, the EU is facing a geopolitical test on several levels. Will Europe be able to ensure the security and reliability of digital infrastructures of key economic and social importance? Will it lead the way in 5G and the associated next wave of industrialisation, or will lose out on innovation? How should EU member states deal with their dependence on foreign technologies and strengthen its "digital sovereignty", a political priority of the EU Commission under Ursula von der Leyen? The latter in particular could be the most important strategic challenge the EU has to face in the long term - especially in the context of the intensifying trade conflict between the US and China and the threat of a "decoupling" of technological supply chains.
[Über ein Jahr lang debattieren EU-Mitgliedsstaaten bereits darüber, ob und wie sie die Beteiligung des chinesischen Technologiekonzerns Huawei an dem Ausbau ihrer 5G-Mobilfunknetze einschränken sollen. Gefangen zwischen ihren beiden wichtigsten Handelspartnern, den USA und China, steht die EU vor einem geopolitischen Test auf mehreren Ebenen. Wird Europa langfristig in der Lage sein, die Sicherheit und Zuverlässigkeit digitaler Infrastrukturen von zentraler Bedeutung für Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft zu gewährleisten? Wird es bei 5G und der damit verbundenen nächsten Welle der Industrialisierung tonangebend sein oder weiter an Innovationskraft verlieren? Wie sollen die EU-Mitgliedsstaaten mit der Abhängigkeit von ausländischen Technologien umgehen und jene „digitale Souveränität“ erreichen, deren Stärkung eine der politischen Prioritäten der EU-Kommission unter Ursula von der Leyen ist? Insbesondere letztere könnte die wichtigste strategische Herausforderung sein, der sich die EU langfristig stellen muss – vor allem im Kontext des sich intensivierenden Handelskonflikts zwischen den USA und China und einer drohenden „Entkopplung“ technologischer Lieferketten.]

Organizations were once linear and one dimensional. No more. The modern organization exists in a multi-dimensional ecosystem sustained by a potent combination of trust, technology and management. Think of Amazon, Alibaba, WeWork, Tencent and Uber. In Ecosystems Inc. some of the world’s leading management thinkers make sense of what it takes to understand, harness and develop organizational ecosystems.

The case “Wild Herbs Grow Tall – Mastering Structural Change in Lusatia” describes how entrepreneur Christina Grätz carves out a niche in the re-cultivation of landscapes in post-mining areas in her native region of Lusatia in Eastern Germany. After having established a thriving B2B business with wild herbs, she explores the possibility of entering the B2C market with a new business line. After several iterations and pivoting, she and her partners set up an online platform for direct web-based sales of organic herbal salts. However, the new company shows a lackluster performance – potentially due to the lack of experience in the online B2B marketing strategy.

Key teaching/learning objectives:

The case illustrates how it is possible for a new business to emerge against the backdrop of macroeconomic decline and structural changes in the economy. It provides insights on the complex endeavor by a fledgling company to transit from the B2B to the B2C market. The case details up-to-date methodologies for classroom discussions, including Saras Sarawathi's effectuation, Jake Knapp's Google Design Sprint, as well as the basic principles of Eric Ries’ Lean Startup.

The case “Wild Herbs Grow Tall – Mastering Structural Change in Lusatia” describes how entrepreneur Christina Grätz carves out a niche in the re-cultivation of landscapes in post-mining areas in her native region of Lusatia in Eastern Germany. After having established a thriving B2B business with wild herbs, she explores the possibility of entering the B2C market with a new business line. After several iterations and pivoting, she and her partners set up an online platform for direct web-based sales of organic herbal salts. However, the new company shows a lackluster performance – potentially due to the lack of experience in the online B2B marketing strategy.

Key teaching/learning objectives:

The case illustrates how it is possible for a new business to emerge against the backdrop of macroeconomic decline and structural changes in the economy. It provides insights on the complex endeavor by a fledgling company to transit from the B2B to the B2C market. The case details up-to-date methodologies for classroom discussions, including Saras Sarawathi's effectuation, Jake Knapp's Google Design Sprint, as well as the basic principles of Eric Ries’ Lean Startup.

Governmental hacking has come into the toolbox of the German security authorities - with legal powers for police forces and some intelligence services, with the development of corresponding technologies ("Government Trojan horses") and first deployment experiences. At the same time, government hacking is associated with considerable risks for the individuals concerned and for society at large. Governmental hacking is increasing and will persist. In the long term, it will constitute a major area of conflict between the promotion of information security on the one hand and the disruption of information security on the other.

[Staatliches Hacking ist im Instrumentarium der deutschen Sicherheitsbehörden angekommen – mit gesetzlichen Befugnissen für Polizeien und einige Nachrichtendienste, mit der Entwicklung entsprechender Technologien („Bundestrojaner“) und ersten Einsatzerfahrungen. Gleichzeitig ist staatliches Hacking mit erheblichen Risiken für die Betroffenen und die Gesellschaft insgesamt verbunden. Staatliches Hacking wird zunehmen und sich verstetigen. Es wird dauerhaft ein zentrales Spannungsfeld zwischen der Förderung von IT-Sicherheit auf der einen und der Durchbrechung von IT-Sicherheit auf der anderen Seite darstellen.]

Teams performing scientific research are becoming increasingly large and interdisciplinary. While prior work has examined antecedents and performance implications of these trends, it is not clear how team size and interdisciplinarity relate to teams’ internal organization, especially the division of labor (DoL) between members. We first develop an organizing framework that integrates three complementary dimensions of DoL: (1) the specialization of individual team members, (2) the distribution of activities across team members, and (3) interdependencies between activities. We then discuss how these aspects of DoL are related to team size and interdisciplinarity and test our hypotheses using author contribution data from over 12,000 scientific articles. We find that team size has a positive relationship with an aggregate measure of DoL, but disaggregated measures show that this relationship holds for some aspects of DoL and not others. We also find that interdisciplinary teams use greater division of labor, although this effect depends on the degree to which interdisciplinarity is intra- versus inter-personal. We conclude by discussing how our conceptual and empirical toolkit may be applied in future research on the drivers and consequences of division of labor in teams.

With permission of Elsevier

With the onset of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, industrial suppliers are increasingly challenged to close their open sales opportunities and keep generating business. Against this backdrop, the authors of this study investigate which offerings industrial customers are most likely to purchase as the pandemic progresses. Drawing on positive decision theory and empirically investigating 31,353 sales opportunities across 57 countries, the authors show that the coronavirus pandemic significantly decreases industrial customers' purchase probability, especially for high-priced offerings. In countries with low uncertainty avoidance and strong long-term orientation (e.g., China, India, Singapore), purchase probability is less affected by the pandemic. The coronavirus pandemic even increases purchase probability for offerings with low prices in countries where cultures are simultaneously uncertainty-avoidant and short-term oriented (e.g., Argentina, Brazil, Mexico). This is presumably because customers safeguard their operations in the face of impending supply shortages. Consequently, this helps suppliers focus on the right sales opportunities to secure their business during exogenous global shocks such as the coronavirus pandemic.

With permission of Elsevier

The digital transformation of all areas of life also involves the public sphere. The government and politicians are called upon to digitally redesign state and local public services in all areas - from education to health care and transport. Digital platforms play a central role in the digital transformation. On the one hand, platform companies are drivers and supporters in the digitization also of public services. On the other hand, they are often market-dominating companies that can reduce the government's ability to design the digital services. Governments are requested, on the one hand, to develop their own platform strategy for the public sector and, on the other hand, to reduce the power of the market-dominating global platforms and to ensure competition.