This article examines the capability antecedents of firm entry into nascent industries. Because a firm's technological investments in nascent industries typically occur before market entry, this study makes a distinction between firm capabilities at the time of market entry and at the time of initial investment.
Innovation is essential for every organization. Yet the relationship between boards and innovation remains unclear. We argue that boards not only monitor, but also provide resources, and innovations require both proper levels of resources (skills) from the board, and appropriate forms of control.
In this paper, we study the effect of a firm’s local channel exits on prices charged by incumbents remaining in the marketplace. Exits could result in higher prices due to tempered competition or lower prices due to reduced co-location or agglomeration benefits. The net effect of these two countervailing forces remains unknown. In addition, little is known about how this effect could change depending on incumbents’ geographic locations.
We contribute to the emerging literature on strategic corporate social responsibility (CSR) and its antecedents by undertaking a systematic analysis of the effect of rivalry on firm and industry CSR. We deal with the codetermination of competition and CSR by using instrumental variables in the firm-level analysis and by modeling it directly in the industry-level analysis.
This study explores the role of knowledge interdependencies on the termination of patented inventions. Termination refers to the abandonment of inventive efforts that are no longer deemed promising. We argue that high interdependencies between an inventive effort and the other inventions in the same research program will increase the cognitive burden on managers and decrease the likelihood of termination.
Often the story of successful places is predicated on the story of an individual who was instrumental in creating institutions and making connections that were transformative for a local economy. Certainly this is the case for Silicon Valley in California and Fred Terman, the Dean of Engineering at Stanford University, USA, who offered his garage to his students, Hewlett and Packard, and encouraged other start-ups. Or George Kozmetsky, the founder of Teledyne, who created the Institute for Innovation, Creativity and Capital (IC2) and mentored over 260 local computer companies in Austin, Texas. Any reading of the lives of these individuals highlights their connection to community and motivations beyond making profits.
In an ever changing global economy, firms need to constantly update their business strategy and operational execution. In this dynamic interactive workshop, leading scholars along with executives and policy makers will discuss most salient trends and opportunities related to global sourcing.
Focusing on U.S. data, we show the existence of a significant positive link between uncertainty and reallocation of resources from private R&D-intensive firms to both tangible private capital and government capital.
The mobility of individual managers has long presented a problem for firms in knowledge-intensive industries. Shifting to more complex work often reduces the importance of a single individual’s knowledge for the firm’s exchange relationships because complex work requires inputs from a broader set of the firm’s members.
This paper examines how tax uncertainty created by highly aggressive tax planning affects a firm's investment decisions. The tax uncertainty that we study arises from tax choices of such inadequate merit that the firms themselves believe that they will lose if audited. Consistent with a simple model that we develop, we find that investments in fixed assets and research and development are increasing, at a decreasing rate, in the tax savings from these aggressive plans.
Innovation has long been seen as the engine of economic growth. But as barriers to innovation such as patent thickets and patent litigation have risen dramatically in recent years, firms are beginning to examine the role that patents play in driving innovation. We examine how shifts in a firm’s intellectual property (IP) strategy can affect future innovation.
Prevailing data suggests that young firms pay employees less than their more mature counterparts. But does a closer look at the data tell a different story? When UNC Kenan-Flagler researcher Paige Ouimet and colleagues exploited the two-sided panel nature of confidential microdata from the U.S. Census Bureau to control for relevant dimensions of worker and firm heterogeneity, they uncovered a positive and significant young-firm pay premium. They also found that worker selection at firm birth is related to future firm dynamics, including survival and growth.
Public opinion polls reveal Americans are turning to companies with purpose and ethics to lead us through the profound anxiety and crises we are currently experiencing as a nation. We developed a corporate reputational equity checklist that will enable firms to brand or rebrand themselves as inclusive and equitable places to work, as well as position their companies as a collective of civically engaged corporate citizens poised and willing to address society’s most pressing ills, including systemic racism.
The COVID-19 pandemic increased economic inequities in a number of ways, including in access to external capital – and while 2020 marked a break-out year for venture-backed firms, the pandemic hit many main street businesses hard. In this Kenan Insight, we explore the forces driving the haves and have-nots in this new economic climate, as well as actionable policy solutions as government support programs wind down.
Post-COVID, tech firms are likely to continue to spread out across America’s cities. What factors determine their choices? For cities that seek to recruit the next Amazon HQ3, what do they gain from winning the competition? And from the perspective of their lower and middle-income residents, is it good or bad if they win?
Craig Allen, president of the U.S.-China Business Council, provides insights on U.S.-China relations and its impact on U.S. firms. The Q&A session facilitated by UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School's Denis Simon further delves into the issue's complexities.
On Nov. 1-2, leading practitioners and top researchers from around the world joined together at the tenth annual Private Equity Research Consortium (PERC) Symposium in Chapel Hill, NC. Hosted by the Institute for Private Capital, an affiliated center of the Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise, the conference has established a reputation as leading the discussion between leading academics and practitioners in the private capital arena. This year’s symposium not only unveiled the latest research insights, but also served as an occasion to look back at ten years of achievements and successes.
Emerging artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities are ushering in significant changes in how enterprises operate – and raising a host of questions for organizations. In this Kenan Insight, we explore how changing the organizational mindset to treat AI as an “employee” may pave the way to fully reaping the benefits of AI systems.
The Kenan Institute Director’s Council serves as a forum for the exchange of ideas among corporate executives, academic researchers and leading policymakers committed to leveraging private enterprise for the public...
UNC’s Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise and the Duke University Innovation and Entrepreneurship (I&E) initiative have embarked on a joint initiative to build a data repository to facilitate empirical research in entrepreneurship.