In Silico documentary – Nature featured this documentary on the fall of the Human Brain Project. I still haven’t watched it but this seems to be an interesting view on the politics behind science.

Exploring the dynamics of novelty production through exaptation: a historical analysis of coal tar-based innovations – previous theories of serendipity explain that it rises from a need or from theory. This paper offers a new route to serendipity – affordances. I did not know this word before but as the paper explains it is “the perceived or actual properties of the thing, primarily those fundamental properties that determine just how the thing could possibly be used”

Social impacts of additive manufacturing: A stakeholder-driven framework – enumerates and classifies possible impacts of a technology like 3d printing. Since I am doing a social and business impact assessment of cloud computing, this is a paper that would be useful model moving forward.

Failing to Learn from Failure: How Optimism Impedes Entrepreneurial Innovation – a fascinating study that links laboratory experiments with firm data. They measured entrepreneurs’ dispositional optimism – the tendency to think that they will have a favorable outcome. They then linked it to patents or product development success. I like their finding that those who are optimistic by disposition tend to not update their beliefs of future success despite negative outcomes. Everytime I meet with my entrepreneur friends, I really see the difference on how they think and perceive things.

Postdoc challenges – For a few weeks now, Nature has been talking about the issues that postdocs have been facing. As a postdoc myself, I can relate to the issues of uncertainty about the future. Despite this, I have been lucky to find a position in a great research group during the pandemic. I am really worried about how academia would proceed moving forward, so we’ll see.

Lab, Gig or Enterprise? How scientist-inventors form nascent startup teams – groups the startup formation strategies by scientists into three clusters. For some inventors, their startup is basically an extension of their academic laboratories where they can experiment with the commercial applications of their research. The gig model occurs when inventors want to pursue an idea quickly and see if it would be viable enough to be an exit. The enterprise model emphasizes creating a team that would enable the creation of a real sustainable business.

Management Research that Makes a Difference: Broadening the Meaning of Impact – every now and then, I have to remind myself what is the point of management research. This editorial provides five forms of impact: scholarly, practical, societal , policy and educational.

Converting inventions into innovations in large firms: How inventors at Xerox navigated the innovation process to commercialize their ideas – a study from June. Really interesting idea of innovators going around other departments to find a more amenable evaluation criteria so that they can later acquire further resources

The Matthew effect and the halo effect in research funding – The Matthew effect refers to the idea taken from the bible that the rich tend to get richer. The Halo effect is the idea that positive impressions in one area can also lead to positive evaluations of other areas. The study shows that researchers gain cumulative advantages, in that getting a funding grant can lead to them getting another one.

Bridging the gap between invention and innovation: Increasing success rates in publicly and industry-funded clinical trials – a study on the role of PI’s expertise on the success of clinical trials. Fascinating that they find that broad experience across multiple disease fields reduce success rates.

Fiction lagging behind or non-fiction defending the indefensible? University–industry (et al.) interaction in science fiction – My first time to come across a study like this. The study explores how science fiction novels view academia-industry interactions, using these novels as kind of a mirror to how society views such interactions. They find that science fiction has been critical of such relationships.

Developing Improvisation Skills: The Influence of Individual Orientations – another unique study using Live Action Role-Playing as the data collection method. As someone who is not really good with thinking on my feet, I found their three types/stages of improvisation skills useful. Imitative improvisation refers to merely taking inspiration from others. When you can then create an original response guided by some structure, you then evolve to reactive improvisation. When you do not need anymore external triggers and can just easily break existing structures, then you are at the generative improvisation stage.

The sandwich game: Founder-CEOs and forecasting as impression management – with so many people posting about their successes on social media, impression management is becoming more and more relevant. In this study, the authors argue that founders are less likely to oversell their company’s forecasts due to their concern with their long-term relationship with investors. I find this quite unintuitive especially when my top of mind founder CEOs are Elon Musk and Elizabeth Holmes.

Applying advanced technologies to improve clinical trials:
a systematic mapping study – comprehensive review of technologies used in clinical trials. I appreciated Table 3 which talked about the possible contributions of a research paper, adapted from Shaw 2003, which I didn’t know before.

The Emergence of New Knowledge: The Case of Zero‐Reference Patents – when we think of science, we talk about standing on the shoulder of giants. Apparently, there are patents that are just so pioneering that they do not reference previous patents.

Engineering Serendipity: When Does Knowledge Sharing Lead to Knowledge Production? – cool study on serendipity. Researchers were randomly selected to interact with other researchers. Their publications and citations were then tracked afterwards.

Organizing Crisis Innovation: Lessons from World War II– talks about the role of the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development led by Vannevar Bush during World War 2 in spurring innovations such as radar, atomic fission, penicillin, and malaria

The long wave of the internet – traces the history of the internet and the paradigms occuring across each phase of its development

Do policy makers take grants for granted? The efficacy of public sponsorship for innovative entrepreneurship – Study finds that while public grants may help in securing further private investment capital, they do not help with revenue over time.

What matters more for entrepreneurship success? A meta‐analysis comparing general mental ability and emotional intelligence in entrepreneurial settings – IQ vs. EQ? This study shows that both are important for entrepreneurship, with emotional intelligence being more crucial.

There are some more articles from AOM that I am looking forward to read but I cannot currently access. I list them here:

• Research movements and theorizing dynamics in management and organization studies
• Heuristic methods for updating small world representations in strategic situations of Knightian uncertainty
• Doomsdays and New Dawns: Technological Discontinuities and Competence Ecosystems