Faculty and Research

Abstract: John's talk will discuss patents on stem cell technology owned by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), a nonprofit institution associated with the University of Wisconsin. These patents have been a focal point for controversy about the granting and enforcement of rights in biomedical technology. As in the case of WARF's stem cell patents, worries that patent rights in such technology can delay or limit follow-on research are exacerbated when the technology is difficult to replicate and access to the technology therefore commonly requires a material transfer agreement (MTA) with a rights holder. Further complications can result from use restrictions in agreements with the donors of tissue or embryos from which transferred material was derived. The controversy over WARF's stem cell patents highlights these concerns and provides lessons about institutions and practices that might smooth the path for future follow-on research

Abstract: We advance theory in strategic management by suggesting two arguments for why and when firms may increase their performance by waiving their property rights on rare and valuable assets. We propose that firms may benefit from reducing their formal resource control if doing so either (1) increases upstream supply productivity by third parties and/or (2) helps firms capture value from a resource jointly with others when no single firm can appropriate the resource using its individual property rights alone. Drawing on a variety of original data pertaining to open source software (OSS) programming activity, firm products, and firms' patent acquisitions, we empirically test whether corporate patent non-assertion claims against OSS users can be explained through our theoretical lenses ex post. Our findings indicate that firms' patent pledges are a subtle means to capture value from a (partially) public resource.

Abstract: This paper presents a model where human capital differences, rather than residual productivity differences, can explain several central phenomena in the world economy. In the model, workers choose both the duration and content of their training. A "knowledge trap" occurs where skilled workers avoid narrow, deep training and thus fail, collectively, to embody frontier knowledge. Standard human capital accounting is shown to underestimate the resulting skill differences between rich and poor nations. The theory may explain price, wage and income differences across countries, and suggests novel interpretations of immigrant outcomes, poverty traps, and the brain drain, among other applications.

Abstract: Most oncology patients are still given a death sentence at the time of diagnosis. This is despite all the new oncology drugs that have been developed over the past several decades. This seminar will explore some of the reasons that so few oncology drugs have been transformative and speculate on some of the possible solutions. We will discuss this from the lens of a drug developer and from the perspective of someone starting a new oncology biotechnology company.

Harold Demonaco, MS is the Director of the Innovation Support Center at Massachusetts General Hospital. He will talk about the role of Academic Medical Centers in creating new innovations and the dominant role of lead users in medicine. He will also discuss one way in which MGH is assisting inventors through the Innovation Support Center.

Frances Toneguzzo, Ph.D. is the Executive Director, Research Ventures and Licensing at Partners Healthcare. She will discuss the challenges to creating and sustaining a culture of innovation in a changing economy. The focus will be on efforts emanating from the technology transfer office in the areas of investigator outreach and individual support, as well as technology incubators and internships and education.

Abstract: Due to the large number of both physical components and design participants involved in the process, the development of a Formula One (F1) vehicle's aerodynamics, like for most complex products, poses substantial operational and organizational challenges to firms. We present work in progress integrating research streams in organizational theory and network analysis to study the determinants of teams' ability to attend to technical interfaces in complex product development projects, focusing on vehicle aerodynamic development in F1. We study how design interfaces in the product architecture map onto communication patterns within the development organization and investigate how organizational boundaries, design interface strength, and direct and indirect interactions impact the alignment of design interfaces and team interactions.

Along the way, we also speak to parallel results as part of other ongoing work related to aircraft development at The Boeing Company.

This paper examines whether the composition of medical research responds to changes in disease incidence and research opportunities. The paper also provides new evidence on induced pharmaceutical innovation. In both cases we use the change in the demographic structure of the market (measured by age structure and obesity prevalence) to test the induced innovation hypothesis. Technological opportunity is calculated from estimates of structural productivity parameters. The extent of inventive activity is measured from the MEDLINE database on 16 million biomedical publications. We match these data with data on disease incidence. We show that medical research responds to changes in disease incidence and research opportunities. We compare our findings on academic medicine, which largely (though not exclusively) reflects non-profit allocation, with the findings in the related literature, which has focused on allocations that are mainly (though not exclusively) the result of for-profit allocation. We also find that pharmaceutical innovation responds to aging- and obesity-induced changes in potential market size.

Abstract: Most entrepreneurship programs train students to be the entrepreneur, but there is also a need to train professionals to serve the entrepreneur. Innovation economies need robust professional services infrastructures that can deliver effective hybrid business-legal advice at all stages of technology entrepreneurship. The University of Washington School of Law and Foster School of Business have developed a unique clinic that teams law and business students to conduct a consulting firm analysis of potential UW technology spin-offs and local technology start-ups. Working under pro bono supervising attorneys and executives, students counsel entrepreneurs across the full range of legal (IP, corporate/securities, tax, regulatory, employment law) and business (management, marketing/branding, accounting, operations, finance advisory) issues that the entrepreneurs will face. Clinic Founding Director, Professor Sean O'Connor, will present on the challenges and benefits of the Clinic as it enters its fifth full year of operation. Specific issues covered include: "who's the client," especially when UW researchers and technology are involved; conflicts as to whose commercialization plan should be followed; and friction arising from differing professional training among the professions.

Abstract: Using detailed survey data from a representative sample of over 5,000 life scientists and physical scientists, we compare industrial and academic science along four key dimensions: the basic versus applied nature of research, organizational characteristics (e.g., degree of freedom, salary), researchers' characteristics, and the use of disclosure mechanisms (patenting versus publishing). Building on prior work that emphasizes different "research missions" of industrial and academic science, we also examine the extent to which differences in the nature of research explain differences in the organization of research, in scientists' characteristics, and in the use of disclosure mechanisms across sectors.

Abstract: The development prospects of a poor country depend in part on its capacity for innovation. The productivity of its innovators depends in turn on their access to technological knowledge. The emigration of highly skilled individuals weakens local knowledge networks (brain drain), but may also help remaining innovators access valuable knowledge accumulated abroad (brain bank). We develop a model in which the size of the optimal innovator diaspora depends on the competing strengths of co-location and diaspora effects for accessing knowledge. Then, using patent citation data associated with inventions from India, we estimate the key co-location and diaspora parameters; the net effect of innovator emigration is to harm domestic knowledge access, on average. However, knowledge access conferred by the diaspora is particularly valuable in the production of India's most important inventions as measured by citations received. Thus, our findings imply that the optimal emigration level may depend, at least partly, on the relative value resulting from the most cited compared to average inventions.

Abstract: When firms recruit inventors, they acquire not only the use of their skills but also enhanced access to their stock of ideas. But do hiring firms actually increase their use of the new recruits' prior inventions? Our estimates suggest they do, quite significantly in fact, by approximately 202% on average. However, this does not necessarily reflect widespread "learning-by-hiring." In fact, we estimate that a recruit's exploitation of her own prior ideas accounts for almost half of the above effect. Furthermore, although one might expect the recruit's role to diminish rapidly as her tacit knowledge diffuses across her new firm, our estimates indicate that her importance is surprisingly persistent over time. We base these findings on an empirical strategy that exploits the variation over time in hiring firms' citations to the recruits' pre-move patents. Specifically, we employ a difference-in-differences approach to compare premove versus post-move citation rates for the recruits' prior patents and the corresponding matched-pair control patents. Our methodology has three benefits compared to previous studies that also examine the link between labor mobility and knowledge flow: 1) it does not suffer from the upward bias inherent in the conventional cross-sectional comparison, 2) it generates results that are robust to a more stringently matched control sample, and 3) it enables a temporal examination of knowledge flow patterns.

Abstract: Cartographic maps of physical places have guided mankind's explorations for centuries. They enabled the discovery of new worlds while also marking territories inhabited by unknown monsters. Domain maps of abstract topic spaces, see http://scimaps.org, aim to serve today's explorers understanding and navigating the world of science and technology. The maps are generated through scientific analysis of large-scale scholarly data sets in an effort to connect and make sense of the bits and pieces of knowledge they contain. They can be used to objectively identify major research areas, experts, institutions, collections, grants, papers, journals, and ideas in a domain of science and/or technology. Local maps provide overviews of a specific area or institution: its interdisciplinarity, import-export factors, or relative speed. They allow one to track the emergence, evolution, and disappearance of topics and help to identify the most promising areas of research. Global maps show the overall structure and evolution of our collective knowledge. This talk will present recent developments in the advanced analysis and interactive visualization of large-scale static data sets and real-time data streams.