סמינר באסטרטגיה ניהולית

Prof. Zur Shapira Stern School of Business, NYU

In this paper, we discuss a formal model of idea flows and project / idea combination (Seshadri & Shapira, 2003) in companies and how hierarchies might influence those combinations. We then use the results of the model to generate hypotheses about the importance and variance of importance of ideas. Then we test the hypotheses based on an analysis of patents for 544 firms surveyed by a compensation consulting firm, in which the hierarchical depth of the firm was also measured. We find that indeed, even after controlling for size, span of control, and other important variables, firms with deeper hierarchies tended to have a more “important” patent. We conclude the paper with a discussion of the implications of these results for organization theory and innovation