Do firms learn from their failed innovation attempts? Answering this question is important because failure is an integral part of exploratory learning. In this study, we consider whether and under what circumstances firms learn from their small failures in experimentation. Building on organizational learning literature, we examine the conditions under which prior failures influence firms' R&D output, in terms of amount and quality. Our findings contribute to the organizational learning literature by providing a nuanced view of learning from failures in experimentation.
Learning may be the single greatest challenge when entering offshore markets. Few, if any, employees have in-depth knowledge of markets other than the one where they live. Faced with the need to learn quickly about a foreign market, many companies employ a variety of approaches, in a variety of sequences. How does the sequence in which a company applies learning approaches affect performance? To assess this question, we observed nine companies in the high technology industry. To minimize geographic and cultural bias, we selected companies with headquarters in three culturally distinct markets: Finland, the U.S. and Singapore.
Founder and Research Director, Institute for Private Capital; Van and Kay Weatherspoon Distinguished Professor of Finance, UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School; Faculty Director, Luther Hodges Scholars
Join part two of our two-part discussion on data privacy as we examine the integration and privacy concerns presented by contact tracing. The conversation will explore how current data protections laws address the issue, and will cover potential regulatory changes we might see in response to the current crisis.
To find signs of productivity, we must first know where to look. Chief Economist Gerald Cohen describes how an area’s industry mix is key to its productivity and how adjusting that mix can drive more local growth using data from our American Growth Project.
The 2017 Workshop on North Carolina Manufacturing Data Science targets a critical gap in the emerging digital manufacturing ecosystem – achieving data-driven improvements in manufacturing processes to realize broader benefits across the factory and enterprise. It will bring together personnel from North Carolina industry, state government, University of North Carolina (UNC) General Administration, and UNC system universities to discuss current capabilities and future needs for widespread implementation.
We consider the allocation of inventory to stores in a “merchandise test,” whereby a fashion retailer deploys a new product to stores in limited quantities in order to learn about demand prior to the main selling season. Our problem formulation includes practical considerations like fixed costs and multiperiod inventory considerations but is challenging to analyze directly. Instead, we take a bounding approach that isolates the novel aspect of our problem: the impact of test inventory allocation on demand learning.
The ongoing fragmentation of work has resulted in a narrowing of tasks into smaller pieces that can be sent outside the organization and, in many instances, around the world. This trend is shifting the boundaries of organizations and leading to increased outsourcing.
London Business School Professor Alex Edmans, a 2022 Kenan Institute Distinguished Fellow, followed up his recent virtual presentation on “The Power of Purposeful Business” by answering key questions from the audience. This week’s Kenan Insight offers a curated Q&A with a few of our favorites, with Professor Edmans tackling topics such as which issues government is best equipped to regulate and which may require shareholders to step in, the limits of using data in ESG measurement, and how best to encourage purposeful thinking throughout an organization.
Some analysis indicates companies with diverse executive teams drive more revenue and are more likely to experience higher profits relative to their nondiverse peers, yet founding teams for both high-growth startups and the private capital groups that fund them stand in stark contrast to the U.S. working age population. Why? And why should it matter? In this week’s Kenan Insight, Kenan Institute Distinguished Fellow Emmanuel Yimfor unpacks statistics on the composition of both high-growth startups and private capital groups, explores the economic and societal implications of their lack of diversity and provides suggestions to facilitate change.
Designing modern call centers requires an understanding of callers’ patience and abandonment behavior. Using a Cox regression analysis, we show that callers’ abandonment behavior may differ based on their contact history, and changes across their different contacts.
There is growing evidence that many multinational corporations are lowering their tax obligations by engaging in income shifting—moving income from high-tax countries to low-tax countries or tax havens, and shifting deductions from low-tax countries to high-tax countries. By at least one estimate, the result is loss of nearly $100 to $240 billion annually in global tax revenues. In this Kenan Insight, we explore the extent of the problem and what might be done to address it.
Our American Growth Project examination of skills in the workforce begins with a discussion of why skills are difficult to measure, then moves to a broad look at two ways to estimate the skill level across our Extended Metropolitan Areas.
Many providers of defined-contribution investment plans, such as 401(k) plans, have advocated for broader access to private investments. In this Kenan Insight, we examine the operating, regulatory and legal constraints involved in allowing that access, and explore what, if anything, retail investors are likely to gain from investing in private funds.
In this study, the authors conduct a systematic investigation on the evolution in the effectiveness of two important marketing mix instruments, advertising and price, over the business cycle. Analyses are based on 163 branded products in 37 mature CPG categories in the UK, and this for a period of 15 years. The data are a combination of (i) monthly national sales data, (ii) monthly advertising data, (iii) data on the general economic conditions, and (iv) consumer survey data.
The debate surrounding returns of private equity vs. public markets continues with a recent paper by AQR. What do the latest data tell us?
Real Estate investments continue to rise in importance in the alternative asset space. But much is still to be learned about their value and performance.
The American Growth Project explains why manufacturing remains essential for economic growth and how manufacturing in the U.S. today incorporates both regional shifts and “stickiness” in traditional strongholds.