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Photo of Rembrand M. Koning

Unit: Strategy

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  • diversity
  • entrepreneurship
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Rembrand M. Koning

Assistant Professor of Business Administration

Rembrand Koning is an assistant professor of business administration in the Strategy unit.  His research examines when firms and entrepreneurs fail to make use of advice, new skills, and market opportunities and how these failures magnify existing inequalities. By exploring the sociology underlying these failures, his work highlights how managers and policymakers can overcome these failures to increase productivity, innovation, and social opportunity.

He has used field experiments to show that while founder-to-founder advice has a long-term impact on a startup’s performance, some founders fail to make use of this potentially valuable feedback. Currently, he is researching how a lack of gender and racial diversity in organizations inhibits innovation and biases firms against competing in promising new markets. With support from the Kauffman Foundation and in collaboration with the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard, he is exploring why some firms don’t adopt the new tools and skills that drive employment growth and opportunity in the knowledge economy. 

His work has been published in the Strategic Management Journal, Organization Science, Research Policy and the American Sociological Review and has been cited in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and Forbes. Professor Koning earned his Ph.D. in business at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he received a Kauffman Dissertation Fellowship. He graduated from the University of Chicago with bachelor’s degrees in mathematics and statistics. 
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Rembrand Koning is an assistant professor of business administration in the Strategy unit.  His research examines when firms and entrepreneurs fail to make use of advice, new skills, and market opportunities and how these failures magnify existing inequalities. By exploring the sociology underlying these failures, his work highlights how managers and policymakers can overcome these failures to increase productivity, innovation, and social opportunity.

He has used field experiments to show that while founder-to-founder advice has a long-term impact on a startup’s performance, some founders fail to make use of this potentially valuable feedback. Currently, he is researching how a lack of gender and racial diversity in organizations inhibits innovation and biases firms against competing in promising new markets. With support from the Kauffman Foundation and in collaboration with the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard, he is exploring why some firms don’t adopt the new tools and skills that drive employment growth and opportunity in the knowledge economy. 

His work has been published in the Strategic Management Journal, Organization Science, Research Policy and the American Sociological Review and has been cited in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and Forbes. Professor Koning earned his Ph.D. in business at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he received a Kauffman Dissertation Fellowship. He graduated from the University of Chicago with bachelor’s degrees in mathematics and statistics. 
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PublicationsResearch Summary

Journal Articles

  1. Article | Research Policy

    Conversations and Idea Generation: Evidence from a Field Experiment

    Sharique Hasan and Rembrand Koning

    When do conversations lead people to generate better ideas? We conducted a field experiment at a startup boot camp to evaluate the impact of informal conversations on the quality of product ideas generated by participants. Specifically, we examine how the personality of an innovator (openness to experience, capturing creativity) and the personalities of her randomly assigned conversational peers (extroversion, measuring willingness to share information) affects the innovator's ideas. We find that open innovators who spoke with extroverted peers generated significantly better ideas than others at the boot camp. However, closed individuals produced mediocre ideas regardless of the individuals they interviewed, suggesting limited benefits of conversations for these people. More surprisingly, open individuals, who are believed to be inherently creative, produced worse ideas after they spoke with introverted peers, suggesting individual creativity's dependence on external information. Our study demonstrates the importance of considering the traits of both innovators and their conversational peers in predicting who will generate the best ideas.

    Keywords: peer effects; field experiment; Interpersonal Communication; Creativity; Personal Characteristics; Entrepreneurship; Innovation and Invention;

    Citation:

    Hasan, Sharique, and Rembrand Koning. "Conversations and Idea Generation: Evidence from a Field Experiment." Art. 103811. Research Policy 48, no. 9 (November 2019).  View Details
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  2. Article | Strategic Management Journal

    Prior Ties and the Limits of Peer Effects on Startup Team Performance

    Sharique Hasan and Rembrand Koning

    We conduct a field experiment at an entrepreneurship bootcamp to investigate whether interaction with proximate peers shapes a nascent startup team's performance. We find that teams whose members lack prior ties to others at the bootcamp experience peer effects that influence the quality of their product prototypes. A one-standard-deviation increase in the performance of proximate teams is related to a two-thirds standard-deviation improvement for a focal team. In contrast, we find that teams whose members have many prior ties interact less frequently with proximate peers, and thus their performance is unaffected by nearby teams. Our findings highlight how prior social connections, which are often a source of knowledge and influence, can limit new interactions and thus the ability of organizations to leverage peer effects to improve the performance of their members.

    Keywords: field experiment; peer effects; office space; Knowledge Spillovers; accelerators; Entrepreneurship; Knowledge Sharing; Performance; Technology Industry; India;

    Citation:

    Hasan, Sharique, and Rembrand Koning. "Prior Ties and the Limits of Peer Effects on Startup Team Performance." Strategic Management Journal 40, no. 9 (September 2019): 1394–1416.  View Details
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  3. Article | Strategic Management Journal

    When Does Advice Impact Startup Performance?

    Aaron Chatterji, Solène Delecourt, Sharique Hasan and Rembrand Koning

    Why do some entrepreneurs thrive while others fail? We explore whether the advice entrepreneurs receive about managing their employees influences their startup's performance. We conducted a randomized field experiment in India with 100 high-growth technology firms whose founders received in-person advice from other entrepreneurs who varied in their managerial style. We find that entrepreneurs who received advice from peers with a formal approach to managing people—instituting regular meetings, setting goals consistently, and providing frequent feedback to employees—grew 28% larger and were 10 percentage points less likely to fail than those who got advice from peers with an informal approach to managing people, two years after our intervention. Entrepreneurs with MBAs or accelerator experience did not respond to this intervention, suggesting that formal training can limit the spread of peer advice.

    Keywords: entrepreneurial management; field experiment; peer effects; entrepreneurial ecosystems; advice; Management Style; Management Practices and Processes; Knowledge Dissemination; Entrepreneurship; Performance; India;

    Citation:

    Chatterji, Aaron, Solène Delecourt, Sharique Hasan, and Rembrand Koning. "When Does Advice Impact Startup Performance?" Strategic Management Journal 40, no. 3 (March 2019): 331–356.  View Details
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  4. Article | American Sociological Review

    Firm Turnover and the Return of Racial Establishment Segregation

    John-Paul Ferguson and Rembrand Koning

    Racial segregation between American workplaces is greater today than it was a generation ago. This increase has happened alongside the declines in within-establishment occupational segregation on which most prior research has focused. We examine more than 40 years of longitudinal data on the racial employment composition of every large private-sector workplace in the United States to calculate between-establishment and within-establishment trends in racial employment segregation over time. We demonstrate that the return of racial establishment segregation owes little to within-establishment processes but rather stems from differences in the turnover rates of more- and less-homogeneous workplaces. Present research on employment segregation focuses intently on within-firm processes. By doing so, we may be overstating what progress has been made on employment integration and ignoring other avenues of intervention that may give greater leverage for further integrating firms.

    Keywords: diversity; firm entry; stratification; segregration; entrepreneurship; Business Ventures; Employees; Diversity; Race; Segmentation; United States;

    Citation:

    Ferguson, John-Paul, and Rembrand Koning. "Firm Turnover and the Return of Racial Establishment Segregation." American Sociological Review 83, no. 3 (June 2018): 445–474.  View Details
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  5. Article | Organization Science

    The Lives and Deaths of Jobs: Technical Interdependence and Survival in a Job Structure

    Sharique Hasan, John-Paul Ferguson and Rembrand Koning

    Prior work has considered the properties of individual jobs that make them more or less likely to survive in organizations. Yet little research examines how a job’s position within a larger job structure affects its life chances and thus the evolution of the larger job structure over time. In this article, we explore the impact of technical interdependence on the dynamics of job structures. We argue that jobs that are more enmeshed in a job structure through these interdependencies are more likely to survive. We test our theory on a quarter century of personnel and job description data for the nonacademic staff of one of America’s largest public universities. Our results provide support for our key hypotheses: jobs that are more enmeshed in clusters of technical interdependence are less likely to die. At the same time, being part of such a cluster means that a job is more vulnerable if its neighbors disappear. And the “protection” of technical interdependence is contingent: it does not hold in the face of strategic change or other organizational restructurings. We offer implications of our analyses for research in organizational performance, careers, and labor markets.

    Keywords: Jobs; organizational structure; natural language processing; Jobs and Positions; Organizational Structure;

    Citation:

    Hasan, Sharique, John-Paul Ferguson, and Rembrand Koning. "The Lives and Deaths of Jobs: Technical Interdependence and Survival in a Job Structure." Organization Science 26, no. 6 (November–December 2015): 1665–1681.  View Details
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Working Papers

  1. Working Paper | 2019

    The Value of Communication: Evidence from a Field Experiment with Entrepreneurs in Togo

    Stefan Dimitriadis and Rembrand Koning

    Why do some entrepreneurs benefit from their portfolio of peer advisers while others do not? In this study, we argue that communication practices are an important but overlooked factor in the formation of useful advice relationships between entrepreneurs, particularly in the context of developing economies. We hypothesize that improving entrepreneurs’ communication practices will affect the relationships they form and have implications for their business performance. To test our theory, we conducted a field experiment in Togo with 301 entrepreneurs who were randomized into a communication practices intervention that was embedded in a business training program. We found that entrepreneurs who were exposed to better communication practices perceived interactions more cooperatively and exchanged more information during those interactions. Moreover, improving communication practices also led to a 50 percent increase in the number of relationships entrepreneurs formed with peers. These relationships exhibited more matching based on skill and were more ethnically diverse. Finally, communication practices training also substantially increased entrepreneurs’ business performance. Our findings highlight how communication practices play a central role in entrepreneurs’ ability to form portfolios of relationships and perform in challenging business environments.

    Keywords: communication practices; business relationships; Entrepreneurship; Communication; Developing Countries and Economies; Africa; Togo;

    Citation:

    Dimitriadis, Stefan, and Rembrand Koning. "The Value of Communication: Evidence from a Field Experiment with Entrepreneurs in Togo." SSRN Working Paper Series, No. 3459643, September 2019.  View Details
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  2. Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2019

    Female Inventors and Inventions

    Rembrand Koning, Sampsa Samila and John-Paul Ferguson

    Has the increase in female medical researchers led to more medical advances for women? In this paper, we investigate if the gender of inventors shapes their types of inventions. Using data on the universe of U.S. biomedical patents, we find that patents with women inventors are significantly more likely to focus on female diseases and conditions. Consistent with the idea of women researchers choosing to innovate for women, we find stronger effects when the lead inventor on the patent is a woman. Women-led research teams are 26% more likely to focus on female health outcomes. This link between the gender focus of the scientist and the type of invention, in combination with the rise of women inventors, appears to have influenced the direction of innovation over the last four decades. Our findings suggest that the demography of inventors matters not just for who invents but also for what is invented.

    Keywords: innovation; Biomedical Research; Innovation and Invention; Diversity; Gender; Research; Health; United States;

    Citation:

    Koning, Rembrand, Sampsa Samila, and John-Paul Ferguson. "Female Inventors and Inventions." Working Paper. (SSRN Working Paper Series, No. 3401889, June 2019.)  View Details
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  3. Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2019

    Experimentation and Startup Performance: Evidence from A/B testing

    Rembrand Koning, Sharique Hasan and Aaron Chatterji

    Recent work argues that experimentation is the appropriate framework for entrepreneurial strategy. We investigate this proposition by exploiting the time-varying adoption of A/B testing technology, which has drastically reduced the cost of experimentally testing business ideas. This paper provides the first evidence of how digital experimentation affects the performance of a large sample of high-technology startups using data that tracks their growth, technology use, and product launches. We find that, despite its prominence in the business press, relatively few firms have adopted A/B testing. However, among those that do, we find increased performance on several critical dimensions, including page views and new product features. Furthermore, A/B testing is positively related to tail outcomes, with younger ventures failing faster and older firms being more likely to scale. Firms with experienced managers also derive more benefits from A/B testing. Our results inform the emerging literature on entrepreneurial strategy and how digitization and data-driven decision-making are shaping strategy.

    Keywords: experimentation; A/B Testing; Entrepreneurship; Strategy; Business Startups; Technology; Performance;

    Citation:

    Koning, Rembrand, Sharique Hasan, and Aaron Chatterji. "Experimentation and Startup Performance: Evidence from A/B testing." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 20-018, August 2019. (SSRN Working Paper Series, No. 3440291, August 2019.)  View Details
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  4. Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2019

    Does Public Ownership and Accountability Increase Diversity? Evidence from IPOs

    Rembrand Koning and John-Paul Ferguson

    Does public ownership improve employment diversity? Organizational researchers theorize that increased transparency to regulators and the public should lead firms to conform to legal and social norms—but that social closure and decoupling should preserve the status quo. Empirical research has been difficult because we lack data on comparable private firms and because firms likely self-select into going public. We construct a new, nationally representative dataset that links firms' filings for initial public offerings to longitudinal data on employment composition from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. We construct a set of comparable firms by looking at companies that filed and then withdrew a plan for an IPO. To account for selection bias in withdrawal and IPO success, we instrument the transition to public ownership using market returns in the book-building phase of the firms' IPO attempts. We find no evidence that moving from private to public ownership increases the representation of women or nonwhite workers or managers. We discuss the implications of this finding for our ability to generalize findings in organizational research.

    Keywords: IPO; Initial Public Offering; Employees; Diversity; Gender; Race; Entrepreneurship; United States;

    Citation:

    Koning, Rembrand, and John-Paul Ferguson. "Does Public Ownership and Accountability Increase Diversity? Evidence from IPOs." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 19-071, January 2019.  View Details
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  5. Working Paper | 2016

    Do Network Dynamics Undermine Idea-based Network Advantages? Experimental Results from an Entrepreneurship Bootcamp

    Rembrand Koning

    Do networks plentiful in ideas provide early stage startups with performance advantages? On the one hand, network positions that provide access to a multitude of ideas are thought to increase team performance. On the other hand, research on network formation argues that such positional advantages should be fleeting as entrepreneurs strategically compete over the most valuable network positions. To investigate these competing views, I embed a field experiment in a startup bootcamp to test if networks that are plentiful in ideas lead to sustainable network- based performance advantages. Leveraging data on each participant’s creative potential, I use peer randomizations and detailed data on network formation to show that ties to more creative individuals improve team performance. Despite the performance benefits of such connections, I find little evidence that entrepreneurs strategically connect to others who have greater creative potential. Instead, entrepreneurs seek feedback from others on dimensions that are more socially salient and verifiable. Beyond providing causal evidence for the durability of network-based performance advantages, these findings provide micro-level support to the importance of knowledge spillovers within bootcamps, accelerators, and startup ecosystems more generally.

    Keywords: Networks; Performance; Business Startups; Business Strategy;

    Citation:

    Koning, Rembrand. "Do Network Dynamics Undermine Idea-based Network Advantages? Experimental Results from an Entrepreneurship Bootcamp." Working Paper, August 2016.  View Details
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Cases and Teaching Materials

  1. Case | HBS Case Collection | March 2018 (Revised August 2018)

    Matching Markets for Googlers

    Bo Cowgill and Rembrand Koning

    This case describes how Google designed and launched an internal matching market to assign individual workers with projects and managers. The case evaluates how marketplace design considerations—and several alternative staffing models—could affect the company’s goals and workers’ well-being. It discusses the details of implementation as well as the intended (and unintended) consequences of the internal match system. The case concludes with a debate about how the Chameleon marketplace could expand to include more Googlers and illustrates what to consider when thinking about launching new matching markets in organizations.

    Keywords: market design; people analytics; google; labor market; staffing; Market Design; Marketplace Matching; Selection and Staffing; Goals and Objectives; Technology Industry; United States;

    Citation:

    Cowgill, Bo, and Rembrand Koning. "Matching Markets for Googlers." Harvard Business School Case 718-487, March 2018. (Revised August 2018.) (More about Bo Cowgill.)  View Details
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