There is a longstanding agreement in management literature that failures should be tolerated to achieve innovative breakthroughs. However, less is known about how organizational search processes unfold after having encountered a failure and how firms can persist in searching within the same idea in order to fix it. This study builds on cognitive research on scientific reasoning to introduce a theory of persistent search during a discovery process. This theory argues that organizations search for the latent value of an idea by generating alternatives (i.e., hypotheses on how the idea works) and experimenting with them. Biases characterize discovery search processes in both the alternatives and the experiments. After a failure, solely persisting in searching for evidence is detrimental, but a coupled persistent search in the evidence space and the hypotheses space can improve the likelihood of reaching a successful result for the failed idea. The theory is tested by using a unique dataset of dynamic portfolios of firms’ ideas built on drug-development data.
Giacomo Marchesini is a Ph.D. candidate in the Strategy Department at IESE Business School. His research agenda lies at the intersection of innovation, organizational search, cognition, and social dynamics. He spans diverse data sources, ranging from patents and drug development to data on firms' political activity and sports data. His work has been published in the Academy of Management Journal and presented at several management conferences, including the Academy of Management Annual Meeting, the Strategic Management Society Annual Conference, and DRUID. Giacomo has worked at SDA Bocconi School of Management, supporting various multinational firms in innovation processes and innovative ideas development. Prior to his academic career, he worked as a consultant in various areas of risk management, corporate governance, and corporate fraud investigation.
The seminar will be held in English.
Major information: Leonardo Corbo (leonardo.corbo@unibo.it)