My research adopts a primarily demand-pull perspective to understand the adaptability of science to the innovation challenges of our time.
I leverage detailed project level data for my quantitative analyses. This includes pharmaceutical drug development data from Cortellis and large-scale metascience datasets from OpenAlex and SciSciNet. I also use books, scientific research articles and interviews for empirical immersion and to ensure descriptive accuracy.
While empirical motivation will always remain at the heart of my research, I am eager to use this foundation to uncover identification strategies and mechanisms, in order to engage more deeply in theoretical conversations on the drivers of science and innovation.
Projects
Demand Pull and the Elasticity of Science (and Scientists)
Scientists Reactions to Opportunities (with Ivanka Visnjic and Michael Bikard)
Status: data analysis
Organizational Settings and Applied Research
Which organizational type is suited to which type of project? (with Ivanka Visnjic and Julian Birkinshaw)
Status: working paper in preparation for submission
We study biotechnology based drug development across academic, entrepreneurial and established organizations. We decompose a project into different dimensions of technological and market application novelty and find that while all organizations pursue all types of projects, they succeed only in those that fit their particular business model.
How does an organization´s research change after commercial success? (with Ivanka Visnjic)
Status: working paper
We find that after commercial success, as entrepreneurial organizations shift towards becoming established, they focus more towards novel market applications. However, they still remain close to the technological frontier suggesting a potential "best of both worlds" period where organizations remain on the cutting edge on both market and technology novelty.
Established "Big Pharma" organizations become more successful at applied research (% of lead projects entering clinical trial) as a technology regime ages
Route to Market
Uncovering Applications on the Route (with Ivanka Visnjic)
Status: working paper
We study the entire drug development pipeline from discovery to launch of over 100,000 projects and find that drugs with a new mechanism of action or those engineered through biotechnology tend to be tested for more diseases on average. We unpack the role of different organizational settings at different stages of development in uncovering new market applications
Do non solutions struggle more for legitimacy?
Status: early stage working paper
An in depth historical case study of the legendary mathematicians Evariste Galois and Niels Henrik Abel and each of their struggles to convince the Mathematical world of the insolubility of quintic polynomial.
Complex (Biotech) or Novel (new mechanism of action) drugs are tested for more market applications (diseases) but slowly