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I'm interested in the way that firms develop specifically I look at the origin of firm differences and within a
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technological context now the the subject of why firms are different has received some attention in the
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literature but traditionally people have sort of waved it away the standard view
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in economics is to actually control for firm differences and then to look at you
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know apples-to-apples comparisons across firms and that works within that context
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pretty well even within the traditional strategic frameworks it is very normal to take a stock of the firm's strengths
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weaknesses capabilities and then allow the firm to do an analysis of where it can fit into a competitive landscape now
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all of that person's that the firm's strengths and weaknesses are relatively
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fixed and that has served us pretty well you know in management but what happens
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when the environment change if the activity that your firm is engaged in at any given moment is serving you well and
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then there's a radical shift in the environment the firm might find itself had a loss as to how to react to that
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and so it turns out that we don't have a lot of very good frameworks to allow a
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firm to enact change and to consciously adapt to the new environment we know that firms can sometimes change we have
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observed that and documented it but even more frequently we see firms not being able to change and react and then the
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splendor and fail so for me my interest is to try to understand firm evolution from the early stages so that we can see
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periods during which firms are changing and adapting then possibly glean some insights into how that can then be
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consciously applied by firms add maturity in order to deal with the environmental turbulence that they might
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be experiencing now more specifically what I do is that I look at a sample of about 1,200 firms around the time when
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they go public my hypothesis is that this is a time of radical change for the firm during which they're much more
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plastic than they would be otherwise given the amount of things that are changing in terms of both the four
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normal and the informal structures so then what I do is I control for firms that went through the IPO as planned
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versus a set of groups as it affirms that experience a shock that was unexpected around the time of going
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public and then I compared to see whether that shock leads to divergent development afterwards so what I'm
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trying to find is to see if I can pick up a case of more hiding plasticity in the firm as it's going through this IPO
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process and then what I find is that in fact there's a very short window of about 18 months around the time when
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they go public where they are particularly susceptible to the environment and thus the conditions that
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they experienced at that point seemed to determine even 20 years later the type of firm that they are their strengths
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their weaknesses in terms of their technological direction some of the key takeaways from the
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research are that we find that not only do firms develop tastes and in preferences but rather they seem to be
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actually developing what we would call capabilities that is the the technological ability to do things
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differently the firms that were exposed to for example non conducive environments for acquisitions
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counterbalance that by developing stronger internal research capabilities and so that suggests that what is
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driving this is not so much the top management predilection or preferences for doing one thing versus another but
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rather something that is ingrained at deeper levels of the organization in terms of what the people and the
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routines and the structures of the firm allow it to do in my case looking at research intensive activities and you
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know so that is valuable in allowing us to actually locate you know the locus of
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where the persistence of these temporary sharks ultimately resides in the long term
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for businesses my research might ultimately give them a more insight into what they can change what they cannot
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change and how now this is a big agenda and for now I've barely scratched the
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surface by documenting that short periods of sensitivity can have lasting effect on what the firm can ultimately
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do but for managers even in the short term it hints at perhaps the importance of being aware of when they're going
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through a transition such as going public in how that might have unintended effects in disrupting their prior plans
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so the best-laid business plan up to the IPO may not be what works best going forward given for example an unexpected
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shock so you know for managers managing the transition from being a private firm
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to a public firm this should inform at least the awareness to be much more conscious about what the environment was
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like at the time and how that may have inadvertently influence decisions that you know seem trivial at the time such
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as what type of people they're hiring in what sort of routines are developing but
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also might end up shifting the direction of the firm in ways that they had not anticipated now stepping away from the
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IPO context I think it's important to note that these things are actually you
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know probably not limited to the IPO there's other disruptive events and I think that you know some of these
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findings should generalize for managers to think about whether other disruptions
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such as changes in management or mergers can also be disruptive in also managing
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that transition I think that my research suggests that it is important to look at
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the way that the environment is a hitherto you know relatively ignored component of what is shaping the firm
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and how it affects the firm differently at different times the choice of looking at IPOs is a
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convenient one from a data perspective in that looking at a very large sample it provides a very clean before and
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after situation where we can you know pinpoint when change what's happening but theoretically there's nothing to
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limit us to saying that the IPO is somehow privileged as a window I mean as I said there might be mergers
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acquisitions death of founders in all sorts of transfer transformative events that might have a similar impact on the
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firm so I'm extending my research by looking at different conditions that might also precipitate these periods of
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hiding plasticity in the firm moving beyond just the sort of temporal effects I'm also looking at digging deeper into
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what precisely is going within the firm so whereas you know my study so far have
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looked at large sample firms and statistical data that that hints at what's really going on to get a much
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more tangible feel for that requires getting into a smaller set of firms or going deeper in looking at actually
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interviews and more case grounded type of approach to really you know provide much more tangible evidence that the
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like I said the whether the change is being perpetuated through formal or informal routines or formal or informal
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relationships or whether it's at the top or at the bottom of the organization
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you