It has been quite a while since I’ve updated my blog. I was busy with finishing my PhD and securing my postdoc position. I’m still pursuing academia for now and thus, would still have to continue reading the literature for the latest advances in the management sciences. These are my interesting reads of the week.

Disruption Versus Discontinuity: Definition and Research Perspective From Behavioral Economics – I have to admit that I use the terms disruption and discontinuity interchangeably. This articles explains the difference between the two. Discontinuity refers to when a new technology competes directly with an established one based on having better performance on some technological dimension (typically 10x better). On the other hand, disruptions attach dominant technologies by satisfying customer needs even though they may not be performing as well on this primary dimension.

Technological impact of biomedical research: The role of basicness and novelty – another study looking at patents and publications to assess the impact of research.

The European research landscape under the Horizon 2020 Lenses: the interaction between science centers, public institutions, and industry – contains nice network visualizations of interacting partners at various levels (country, affiliations and organizations)

Anchor entrepreneurship and industry catalysis: The rise of the Italian Biomedical Valley – fascinating account on the role of entrepreneurship in transforming a depressed rural area into an internationally known medical-device cluster. I especially like how much they take into account the role of luck in the story of this entrepreneur Mario Veronesi: “many of Veronesi’s successes came accidentally, a result of serendipity, being present at the dawn of an emerging medical field that married knowledge about renal and cardiac treatment to improved plastics.”

From creative destruction to creative appropriation: A comprehensive framework – study exploring Didi, usually called China’s Uber. I appreciated the typology in the paper talking about the other forms of creative destruction. Destruction is when a firm outright does not cooperate with the incumbents. Creative cooperation is when incumbents work together with the disruptors. In the middle of these two is creative appropriation, where a firm disrupts a market by leveraging the complementary resources of an incumbent without directly cooperating with them.