This paper shows that the presence of conditional staging in R&D (Research & Development) has a critical impact on portfolio risk, and changes diversification arguments when a portfolio is constructed. When R&D projects exhibit option-like characteristics, correlation between projects plays a...

Background: To stay competitive in a highly unpredictable market of today, companies must be able to manage project risks effectively. The basis for an effective risk management is a thorough risk analysis. Despite the availability of many different risk analysis approaches, companies can be...

Operationalizing the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety will require resolving disputes about the meaning of the term 'precautionary approach' in the treaty text. Although the terms precautionary approach and precautionary principle have been referred to in the regulation of transgenic plants for...

We view innovation investment as a real option and explore the implications of ambiguity (Knightian uncertainty) and risk for innovation decisions. Our analysis uses a risk measure and a new outcome-independent measure of ambiguity. We find a consistently significant negative effect of ambiguity...

Innovation success depends heavily on firm's ability to set priorities and select the most promising options from its project portfolio before the odds of success or failure become visible and reliable. We ask: What does previous innovation experience tell firms about what not to do in the...

Employment relationships in the internet and technology sectors are highly dynamic with change and churn as the norm. Employees are now knowledge workers: highly educated, mobile, often with multiple cultural links, possibly exceeding other company assets in their comparable institutional value....

In this note we compare the laissez-faire steady-state solution in the Howitt and Aghion (1998) model to the social optimum. The analysis offers several new insights in comparison to the welfare analysis in Aghion and Howitt (1992). We find various new distortions between private and optimal...

Professional mobility has profound importance for firm strategy, innovation, and productivity. Prior work on legal constraints on mobility has focused on non-compete covenants and patents. Here, we investigate the impact of the doctrine of inevitable disclosure in U.S. state-level trade secrets...