Market Learning in Technology Enterprises

Annaleena Parhankangas's research project is with Anton Danielsen from Helsinki University of Technology, and focuses on when and how technical entrepreneurs learn about their markets. There are numerous examples illustrating how radically new technologies emerge as “solutions looking for problems” and how firms developing these technologies encounter serious difficulties when trying to transfer their inventions to the market place. Paradoxically, business folklore often cites adaptability and change as key to survival and performance; yet learning, defined as changes in the core elements of the firm, is not necessarily advantageous for the learning organization.

In fact, there exists a strong research stream in the field of population ecology suggesting that selection processes tend to favor organizations whose structures are difficult to change. To further explore this dilemma, their research project makes a distinction between market learning through expansion, modification and contraction. The results of their study shows that the likelihood of market learning depends on a host of contextual factors, such as managerial experience of founders, novelty of technology and markets as well as prior performance. Their findings contribute to the debate on whether learning is helpful or harmful for organizations by showing that market learning through business model expansion has positive performance implications for innovating firms, whereas learning through modification and contraction may hurt the performance of technology-based ventures.

If you are more interested in our study, please feel free to contact Annaleena at Annaleena.Parhankangas@njit.edu.

IT Strategy and Knowledge Management

Katia Passerini is an Assistant Professor and the Hurlburt Chair of Management Information Systems at the School of Management of the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) where she teaches courses in MIS, Knowledge Management and IT Strategy.

She has published in refereed journals and proceedings (Communications of the ACM, CAIS, Society and Business Review, Journal of Knowledge Management, Computers & Education, Journal of Educational Hypermedia and Multimedia, IEEE Internet Computing) and professional journals (Project Management Network, Cutter IT Journal, Cutter Benchmark Review), particularly in the area of computer-mediated learning, IT productivity and knowledge management.

Her professional experience includes multi-industry projects at Booz Allen Hamilton and the World Bank where she worked on information technology projects in Europe, North America and the South Pacific. Dr. Passerini earned both a MBA and a Ph.D. degree in Information & Decision Systems from the George Washington University, USA.

Dr. Katia Passerini is working on a book for Springer –US on "Small and Medium Enterprises Information Technology Management: Competitive Opportunities in the Broadband Economy." This book will provide an overview of how small business organizations can better utilize information technology (I/T) and knowledge management. It will "re-size" the discussion on I/T to make it relevant to the small business arena to foster adaptation and adoption by small organizations. It will open the door for bottom-up technology-driven innovation and will excite the I/T service providers and vendors to re-think an often overlooked market. For updates about this project, please email pkatia@njit.edu

Research in Marketing

Rajiv Mehta, Ph.D., (Drexel University) is an Associate Professor of Marketing. Previously, he served on the faculty of Loyola University New Orleans.

Dr. Mehta’s research has been widely published in major academic journals and presented at national and international academic conferences.  His research, which focuses on the areas of selling and sales management, marketing channels, and global marketing, has appeared in Journal of Business Research, Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, Business Horizons, European Journal of Marketing, International Marketing Review, Journal of Business to Business Marketing, Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing, Journal of Marketing Channels, Journal of Global Marketing, and others. 

Published by Houghton-Mifflin, he has co-authored two textbooks entitled Sales Management: Building Customer Relationships and Partnerships, as well as Personal Selling: Building Customer Relationships and Partnerships. In addition to winning the 2001 award for an outstanding paper in International Marketing Review, Dr. Mehta’s contributions to teaching were recognized by the alumni when he has awarded the university-wide Robert W. Van Houten award for Teaching Excellence in 2005.  He received the University Award for Excellence in the Category of Teaching in Upper Division Undergraduate Instruction and was also appointed Master Teacher. Prior to entering academia, Dr. Mehta worked in sales and marketing for a major international manufacturer of steel wire ropes and cables.

A Feminist Approach to Management

One strand of Hindy Lauer Schachter’s research deals with how relationship-based feminist models of “woman-centered reality” affect our understanding of organizations.  Dr. Schachter is a Professor of Management at NJIT.

In its January/February  2008 issue, Public Administration Review published her case study of how Lillian Borrone, the first woman to head a Port Authority of New York/New Jersey line division, used a relationship-based leadership approach to regenerate a faltering Port of New York and re-establish it as the leading East Coast Port. 

Currently, Professor Schachter is working on two papers relating feminist organization theories to public-sector performance measurement. Her research centers on a feminist model’s approach to issues of expertise versus community input in variable selection. 

Entrepreneurship and Small Business Development

Professor Bruce Kirchhoff specializes in research on entrepreneurship, especially technology intensive business start-ups.  During the last three years, his research has been published in a variety of refereed research journals: Technological Forecasting and Social Change; Technovation; Journal of Small Business Management; Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice; International Small Business Journal; and International Entrepreneurship Management Journal. One especially interesting article is a econometric analysis using U. S. Bureau of the Census data to correlate university research expenditures and the incidence of new, start up businesses.  This analysis identified a positive relationship suggesting that university research is a major mechanism for new business formations quite possibly because university researchers use their research to create new products and form new businesses. 

Currently he is using Census data to examine the role of new small firms in employment growth within the U.S.  His earlier research revealed that the majority of net new employment is contributed by newly formed small firms.  The current research (to be published soon) is confirming this finding.  Subsequently, another current project is using the Census data to compare the growth of high-tech new firms with the rest of the new firms to see what the high-tech contribution is to employment growth.

The Changing Face of Innovation Management

Shanthi Gopalakrishnan, Ph.D. is an associate professor of management.

A key area of Dr. Shanti Gopalakrishnan's research is managing the information process.  As businesses face an increasingly competitive environment, there is more pressure to gain competitive advantage through knowledge based innovations which result in new technologies and new products.Meeting this challenge is an increasingly important issue for senior managers.  One strategy for leveraging knowledge and reducing research and development expenses is for companies to partner with universities.  Dr. Gopalakrishnan's research in this area indicates that trust between partners, geographic proximity, and flexible corporate policies with respect to intellectual rights facilitates greater knowledge and technology exchange between corporations and universities.Once discovered, getting innovations to market is critical to gaining competitive advantage.  As might be expected, there are many important questions associated with time to market.  For example, are large organizations more innovative than smaller firms?  Are narrowly focused niche organizations more innovative than broader focused generalist companies?  Is being innovative synonymous with being a first mover? What is the impact of innovation on firm performance?

Dr. Gopalakrishnan's research has shown that while organization size facilitates the adoption  of many innovations, niche organizations adopt innovations more quickly.  Innovations that are more tacit and integrated into a firm's activities are more likely to make a competitive difference to the organization.  Her research has also explored the performance implications of innovation.  While some innovation dimensions (innovation speed) more strongly affect objective measures of performance such as ROA and ROE, other dimensions (magnitude of adoption) affect perceived effectiveness of the firm rather an objective financial measures.

Effective innovation management also varies by industry and by firm.  Dr. Gopalakrishnan has studied innovation in the banking, biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries.  Her research indicates that firms in the biopharmaceutical industry need to innovate frequently, and enforcement and finite life of patents create different management issues when compared to service industries like commercial banking where knowledge about innovations in more transparent.

This research augments Dr. Gopalakrishnan's courses in the management of technology and corporate strategy while keeping SOM's curricula current and innovative.