MACRO & QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH

PUBLISHING IN AMD
Christopher L Tucci
Associate Editor
Imperial College London
 Discoveries

Some observations
• It is hard to publish phenomenological research in
management, whereas in some fields it is normal to
do so
• Some of the most impactful articles in other fields
focus on measurement without knowing in advance
the “underlying mechanisms”
• In most cases, it is not desirable to retro-fit
hypotheses and theory onto empirical results
– Especially when there may have been some interesting
reasons to collect the data in the first place.
Discoveries
An interesting article
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Sequence of argument for Woolley (2017)

• Motivation on spinouts: focus on corporate and to some degree
academic, even though government spinouts are numerous and
important; summary tables
• Note that some founders leave their organization whereas
others buy or lease IP from universities, government labs, or
companies—distinction not studied; summary tables
• Technology: nanotechnology in which almost all commercial
activity started at one point in time, especially after a
government funding initiative (NNI), with much variance on the
above two dimensions
• Data set description, descriptive statistics on startup and
spinout characteristics, and expanded set of outcome measures
 Discoveries

Sequence of argument for Woolley (2017)

• Tables (and justification on which event study method is appropriate)
– Reference group: non spinouts
– Academic founders and IP as a reference group
– Corporate founders and IP as a reference group etc.
• Robustness checks
– Controls for environmental munificence
– Different distributions for hazard modeling
– Alternative measures
– Check on arbitrariness of NNI as kickoff
• Finding: Large differences between founders and IP sales across many
different dimensions. Spinouts are not a homogeneous group!
• Speculation on why these different combinations have different
results across the different outcomes
Discoveries

Another interesting article

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Sequence of argument for Lerner
(1997)
• Short motivation on technology racing and lack of empirical work with
conflicting predictions about how they work (incentives for investment
on the part of incumbents and entrants), no hypotheses
• Is disk drive sector appropriate? Descriptive statistics on firm entry
and exit at industry level
• Data set description, descriptive statistics on firm characteristics,
including outcome measures
• First look at whether incumbents maintained technological leadership
• Concern: Maybe other factors besides technological characteristics
influenced outcomes
– Table showing relation between technological position and subsequent
performance (future technological position, sales growth, exit)
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Sequence of argument, continued

• Second look at industry position and outcomes using two different outcome
measures, assume more effort is necessary to get there
• Concern: Maybe technological position does not correlate with “effort”
– Table analyzing time to introduction of next improvement with less time assumed to
be correlated with more effort (consistent results)
• Three alternative explanations offered
– Table with regression results incorporating three control variables using different
specifications (probit yes/no, OLS on outcome, sample selection correction)
• Revisit time to introduction of improvement
• Concern: entry and exit into sample
– Table excluding either or both
• Concern: non-strategic factors in decisions
– Table controlling for captive producers
• Final discussion on implications for technology firm valuations at IPO
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Other articles accepted

• “Value creation processes in nascent peer-to-peer marketplaces”
• “The Significance of High-Technology Firm Founders' Gender,
Education, and Occupation for Firm Outcomes”
• “Does Business Model Matter?”
• “Entrepreneurship and the mass media: Evidence from Big Data”
• “Varieties of Local Government Experimentation: U.S. State-led
Technology-Based Economic Development Policies, 2000 - 2015”
• “Optionality and Selectiveness in Innovation”
• “Emergent coordination among Open Crowds solving problems”
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Some things we look for

• We can relax some aspects of research design when in exploration
mode
– Example: Including and excluding outliers or high leverage points
and discussing
– Factor analysis and exploratory methods, including data mining
and machine learning
• Apply all your normal checks of the methods and specifications that
you would bring to bear on any statistical paper
– Typical: correct specification, correct use of panel methods,
awareness of sample selection, awareness of endogeneity, controls
for ruling out other explanations, high correlation between
variables, and so forth
– If anything, you should be even tougher on construct validity
because there is NO reason to force-fit the variables onto
someone else’s theoretical constructs!
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Thank you!
Christopher L Tucci
christopher.tucci@epfl.ch
http://csi.epfl.ch
Twitter @cltucci