Lion's Share: The Research Cast

ENTR 810 | Session 6 | Climate, Energy, and Agricultural Innovation

Introduction

The food and agriculture sector is essential for fighting climate change because agri-food systems make up about 30 percent of human-caused global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, it receives less than 5 percent of climate finance despite the urgent need for $1.1 trillion in annual investments over the next five years. Climate disruptions, such as extreme weather events, make food production more difficult and create complex, cascading risks across energy and food systems. This calls for major shifts and innovations at scale. Emerging trends in food and agriculture include increasing land value beyond just crops (for example, through regenerative agronomy for carbon sequestration), driving the biorevolution, promoting sustainable eating (such as expanding plant-based and lab-grown proteins), and reducing waste. These solutions often represent a "third way," combining traditional agroecology with advanced technologies like robotics and AI. Overall, the move toward a green economy is projected to create $11 trillion in value by 2040, offering opportunities in four key areas: critical minerals, green technology manufacturing (the largest sector), green industrial materials, and green services. Artificial intelligence plays a crucial role in this transition by helping to accelerate innovations and optimize current infrastructure, especially by accurately predicting the often unpredictable supply of renewable energy sources like wind. Better forecasting can boost performance by up to 20 percent compared to older systems and reduce dependence on carbon-heavy backup fuels. To expand sustainable agricultural practices and other green solutions, there is an urgent need for innovative finance models utilizing catalytic capital to de-risk investments, which often have long payback periods, and thus unlock essential commercial funding.

MBADM 850 | Session 6 | Design Thinking for Innovation and Empathy

Introduciton:

Innovation success is driven by deeply human-centered approaches, notably Customer Development (CD) and Design Thinking (DT), both of which emphasize a comprehensive understanding of the user to reduce the high rate of product failure. CD, a four-phase framework by Steve Blank, starts with searching for a viable, scalable, and repeatable business model (Customer Discovery and Validation) before moving to execution (Customer Creation and Company Building). DT, an iterative, human-centered approach used for complex problem-solving, aligns closely with the empathize and define phases of CD. The main principle of both methods is empathy and need finding, which requires product teams to "get out of the building and get close to your customers" to uncover underlying needs and motivations rather than just stated demands. DT aims for solutions at the intersection of three key lenses: desirability (what people want), feasibility (what is technically possible), and viability (what makes a sustainable business model), with some frameworks also considering responsibility (ethics). The DT process involves framing challenges with "How Might We...?" questions, gathering inspiration through observation, generating ideas with divergent thinking, and quickly developing rough prototypes, embodying the ethos of 'failing fast to learn fast.' These processes are supported by tools like Personas, Customer Journey Maps, and the Business Model Canvas, recognizing that observing a relatively small group of 20 to 30 customers can provide about 90 percent of the insight needed to develop the right product.

ACCTG 502 | Session 6 | Litigation Risk and Voluntary Disclosure: Evidence from Legal Changes 2019

Joel F. Houston, Chen Lin, Sibo Liu, Lai Wei

Introduction:

The study examines how changes in litigation risk affect firms' voluntary disclosure practices. Using three exogenous legal events in the U.S., the authors apply a matching-based fixed-effects difference-in-differences approach to identify causal effects. Results indicate that firms reduce management earnings forecasts when litigation risk decreases and increase them when litigation risk rises, with the effect mainly seen in disclosures of negative news. These findings are consistent across various specifications, samples, and disclosure measures.

ACCTG 502 | Session 6 | Institutional monitoring through shareholder litigation - 2010

C.S. Agnes Cheng, Henry He Huang, Yinghua Li, Gerald Lobo.

Introduction:

The study investigates whether institutional investors, when acting as lead plaintiffs in securities class action lawsuits, are effective monitors of corporate behavior. Using 1,811 lawsuits from 1996 to 2005, the authors find that cases with institutional lead plaintiffs are less likely to be dismissed, yield larger settlements, and lead to greater improvements in corporate governance (notably board independence) than cases led by individual plaintiffs. These results suggest that institutional investors use litigation as a credible disciplinary mechanism.

ACCTG 502 | Session 6 | Does Litigation Deter or Encourage Real Earnings Management? - 2020

Sterling Huang, Sugata Roychowdhury, Ewa Sletten

Introduction:

The study examines how litigation risk affects real earnings management (REM). Using a difference-in-differences approach around a 1999 Ninth Circuit Court ruling that unexpectedly decreased litigation risk, the authors find that firms based in the Ninth Circuit significantly increased their use of REM compared to firms in other circuits. The evidence indicates that litigation risk acts as a deterrent to REM, mainly because it limits managers' ability to issue optimistic or misleading disclosures that hide opportunistic motives. Increases in REM were especially notable when managers had strong incentives to manipulate earnings and when governance mechanisms were weak.

MBADM 850 | Session 5 | Ideation, Creativity, and New Thinking Strategies

Introudction:

Today will cover the multifaceted processes required for generating innovative and breakthrough ideas, encompassing structured group ideation methods, individual mindsets, and strategies for successful startup conception. Effective traditional brainstorming relies on several rules, including deferring judgment, encouraging wild ideas, building on others' contributions, going for quantity (such as 100 ideas in 60 minutes), and using visual aids; the process should capture everything and avoid premature evaluation or judging questions, saving analysis for the end when ideas are categorized and reduced. Alternatively, a powerful technique known as the "question burst" focuses solely on generating new questions (aiming for at least 15 in four minutes) rather than answers, which helps reframe problems, challenge underlying assumptions, and push past cognitive biases to reveal new pathways. Individual innovators are urged to prioritize making meaning over money, create a short mantra, jump curves to find revolutionary concepts instead of just making incremental improvements, and continuously evolve their products ("churn, baby, churn") even if the initial launch is imperfect. Successful ideas often stem from having a problem that requires a solution, actively listening for opportunities, observing the world (as observation often wins over IQ), and immediately writing down great ideas before they disappear. For entrepreneurs, the best startup ideas originate from solving acute, high-quality problems, seeking founder market fit by leveraging the team's expertise, and operating in spaces that might seem boring or difficult to start, as these are often overlooked by competitors; furthermore, embracing diverse social interaction, allowing for personal downtime, and maintaining a culture of active experimentation and observation are crucial for fostering a constantly innovative environment.

ENTR 810 | Session 5 | Startup and Corporate Innovation Structures

Introduction:

Today will explore the contrasting dynamics of innovation between large corporations and agile startups, along with a detailed profile of computing pioneer Chuck Peddle. Startups are known for their flexibility, willingness to adapt quickly, and project-oriented work styles, allowing them to disrupt traditional markets and succeed with limited resources. Larger organizations, often weighed down by bureaucracy, legacy systems, and risk aversion, can learn from this entrepreneurial approach by fostering a culture of ongoing innovation, strategically empowering internal leaders, and maintaining the energetic spirit of startup founders they acquire. Additionally, the material discusses the mutual benefits of corporate-startup collaborations, where companies gain essential innovation and startups receive funding, expertise, and market access. The sources also detail the career of electrical engineer Chuck Peddle, who greatly influenced modern computing as the lead designer of the cost-effective and highly successful 6502 Microprocessor, used in seminal devices like the Apple II, Commodore PET, and Nintendo Entertainment System. Peddle's other notable achievements include inventing zone bit recording for hard drives, designing early modern point-of-sale systems with distributed intelligence, creating the KIM-1 single-board computer, and developing the advanced Victor 9000 computer.

MKTG 556 | Session 6 | When it pays to have a friend on the inside: contingent effects of buyer advocacy on B2B suppliers - 2019

Justin M. Lawrence & Andrew T. Crecelius & Lisa K. Scheer & Son K. Lam

Introduction:

As organizational buying systems become more complex and sophisticated, suppliers increasingly depend on buyer advocacy: an individual's efforts to influence colleagues to improve the supplier's standing. Drawing from cognitive response theory, the authors propose an inverted U-shaped relationship between a buyer's advocacy for a supplier and the customer's purchases from that supplier. They suggest that this effect is influenced by the advocate's industry experience and the characteristics of the customer–supplier relationship. Analyzing multisource data from a B2B service provider (Study 1) confirms the predicted inverted U-shaped relationship, while a unique dataset from a large industrial supplier (Study 2) broadly supports the proposed moderators. Finally, a randomized experiment (Study 3) reproduces key findings and supports the cognitive response mechanisms theorized. These results add to the limited literature on buyer advocacy in the organizational buying context and provide practical insights for suppliers and buyers.

MKTG 556 | Session 6 | Managing Laggards: The Importance of a Deep Sales Bench - 2019

Jeffrey P. Boichuk, Raghu Bommaraju, Michael Ahearne, Florian Kraus, and Thomas J. Steenburgh

Introduction:

Sales leaders often threaten punishment to manage poor performers (i.e., laggards), but little research has explored the effects of such threats. This study fills that gap by examining an intervention called the "bench program" through a field-based quasi-experiment and a randomized lab experiment. In the field, the company involved informed salespeople in treatment districts that a trainee would replace them at the end of the year if they failed to meet their quota and finished last in their district. Difference-in-differences analyses of matched treatment and control groups show that the bench program had an immediate and lasting effect on performance. Additionally, laggards improved more than higher performers, and salespeople with larger advice networks improved more than those with smaller networks. A lab experiment compared the bench program with a program that carried the same firing threat but without any replacements in sight. Performance in the bench program surpassed that in the firing condition, indicating that the vividness of a threat can enhance its deterrent effect.

MKTG 556 | Session 6 | Communicating with B2B buyers after "Dropping the Ball": Using digital and non-digital communication formats to recover from salesperson transgressions - 2024

Stephanie M. Mangus Huanhuan Shi, Judith Anne Garretson Folse, Eli Jones, Shrihari Sridhar

Introduction

Salespeople face a flood of new sales enablement tools and digital communication options daily, creating innovative ways to interact with customers and handle the inevitable chance of "dropping the ball." This research examines how different communication methods can cushion the blow and reduce damage from salesperson transgressions. Study 1 uses company-provided communication and performance data, along with survey responses from business-to-business (B2B) customers, to show that synchronous communication (such as face-to-face (F2F) versus email) lessens the negative effects of relational transgressions but does not affect sales process transgressions. Study 2 conducts an experiment with B2B professionals, revealing that synchronous communication (via videoconferencing and F2F versus email) enhances relationship satisfaction and positive word of mouth (PWOM) more for relational transgressions than for sales process issues. Study 3 further explores these findings through an experiment involving additional communication formats (phone and text), examining perceived salesperson competence and warmth as mediating factors. Overall, F2F or synchronous communication should not be seen as the universally preferred approach during transgressions, and salespeople need to balance communication strategies with resource limitations.