Researchers Examine Social Capital in New Product Development Scholarship

Researchers at the Fogelman College are using agent based modeling simulation to better understand the role of social capital and social networks in the publishing productivity of scholars in innovation management.

This study builds on a previous study which found that two types of collaboration strategies, brokerage and closure, are useful in creating social capital structures that promote scholarly productivity. In the current study the team is creating and executing agent based modeling simulations and analyzing the results to better understand the role of collaboration strategies in scholarly productivity.

Specifically, some of the questions the researchers seek to answer include: What is the relationship between the number and kinds of ‘strategic’ agents and the overall quality of publications in a field? What is the threshold level of ‘strategic’ agents needed to significantly improve the quality of publications in the field? Is there a threshold number of ‘strategic’ agents where the quality of publications is maximized? What are the relative differences in performance across collaboration strategies? What opportunities are present within the current network of new product development scholars?

The research team includes Jeff Thieme (jthieme@memphis.edu) and Mehdi Amini of the Marketing and Supply Chain Management Department.

Six-Year Study Examines the Impact of the Level and Timing of Market Intelligence Acquisition on Radical Innovation Projects in the Business Community

Researchers are examining how firms engaged in radical innovation can manage the level as well as the timing of market intelligence acquisition to build competitive advantage and improve the likelihood of success.

The research team has broken down the radical innovation process into a four-stage process, and they are analyzing how innovators manage market intelligence acquisition activities across each of the stages, including the moderating effect of market turbulence.

Empirical results from 239 radical innovation projects provide strong support for the researchers’ model, but they also reveal several surprising results that resolve conflict in the literature. The team found that market intelligence gathering activities in radical innovation are useful only in the product design and product commercialization stages. They also determined that under conditions of high market turbulence, early market intelligence acquisition has negative effects on performance, but when market turbulence is low, it is beneficial to acquire market intelligence in the early stage of the process.

The research team includes Jeff Thieme (jthieme@memphis.edu) from the Department of Marketing and Supply Chain Management at the University of Memphis Fogelman College of Business & Economics and Michael Song of the University of Missouri-Kansas City.