Entrepreneurship and Innovation Seminars 2011-2012

Monte Shaffer and Len Jessup

In this presentation, we provide an overview of the Patent Rank algorithm and describe how it is an improvement over the traditional Trajtenberg (1990) forward-citation-count measure.  We then describe a generalized Patent Rank model that accounts for various weighting schema and temporal constraints.  Utilizing a marginal-structural (ms) Patent Rank model, we empirically test the fundaments of entrepreneurial innovation from an Austrian perspective:  the identification of Schumpeterian shocks and Kirznerian competition.  We then describe how observation of a patent's value can become prediction.  Using a marginal-combined (mc) Patent Rank model and a few years of data, we can model, using nonlinear growth, the patent's expected lifetime value.  We apply this prediction model to identify important patent innovations from IP portfolios, using IBM as an example.  Finally, we will discuss the need for the patent data center (contiguous, clean data) to address the most meaningful question:  can we observe the patent portfolios of firms using Patent Rank to create a financial investment strategy?

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Time: 3:00pm Locatin: McClelland Hall, Room #128

Kathleen Eisenhardt
Stanford University

Catalyzing Strategies and Efficient Tie Formation: How Entrepreneurial Firms Obtain Investment Ties: Although network ties are crucial for firm performance, the strategies by which executives actually form ties are relatively unexplored. In this study, we introduce a new construct, tie formation efficiency, and clarify its importance for superior network outcomes. Building on fieldwork in 9 Internet security ventures seeking investment ties, we unexpectedly identify two equifinal paths for how executives form ties efficiently. One relies on existing strong direct ties and is only available to privileged firms. The other relies on a second new concept, catalyzing strategy, by which executives advantageously shape opportunities and inducements to form ties, and is available to many firms. Overall, we add insights to the network and signaling literatures, and to the nascent literature on how strategic action, especially by low-power actors such as entrepreneurs, shapes critical network outcomes.

Time: 11:30am Location: McClelland Hall, Room #405F

Michael Lounsbury
University of Alberta
Michael Lounsbury from the University of Alberta will be our speaker and this will be in conjunction with the Sociology Department. Mike will talk on institutional logics and relate this to innovation.

Time: 12:00pm Location: James E. Rogers College of Law, Room #164

Eileen Fischer
York University

Frustrated Fatshionistas: Toward an Understanding of Consumer Quests for Inclusion in Mainstream Markets: While prior research has studied consumers who oppose mainstream marketing practices, we lack insight into why and how consumers may mobilize to seek greater inclusion in and more choice from mainstream markets. We conduct a qualitative study of consumers who demand more choice in plus-sized clothing from mainstream fashion marketers: the Fatshionistas. Drawing in part on the work of Bourdieu, and in part on the institutional theory and the notion of institutional logics, we offer insights into the field level factors that trigger consumers to seek greater legitimacy in a market  in which they feel marginalized, and we identify three kinds of institutional tactics that consumers use in such cases. In addition, our findings highlight the diverse market change dynamics that are likely to occur when consumers are more versus less legitimate in the eyes of mainstream marketers, and in instances where the changes consumers seek are more versus less consistent with extant logics and practices in the marketplace

Time: 11:00am Location: McClelland Hall, Room #320CC