Research

This paper examines why closely competing creators collaborate on social media platforms such as YouTube despite high audience overlap and intense competition. I argue that collaboration functions as a demand-side mechanism that reduces discovery costs, facilitates consumer search, and expands sustained engagement rather than reallocating a fixed pool of attention. Using a novel dataset linking individual-level viewing histories via Google Takeout to video- and channel-level data, the study traces how viewers discover new creators through collaborations and whether such exposure leads to both sustained engagement and platform competitiveness.

Using linked employee-employer data of approximately 93 percent of all U.S. inventors, we show that inventor compensation dispersion has been rising both within- and between firms since 2000. Importantly, inventors working at firms with higher knowledge interdependence earn higher wages after controlling for firm size. Moreover, firms pay higher wages to more central inventors in the collaboration network, in particular when such central positions are less prevalent inside the firm. We argue and plan to show that the rising compensation dispersion can be attributed to 1) sorting of inventors among different types of firms, or/and 2) premium to complex innovation.

This paper examines how entrepreneurial teams’ prior organizational experiences shape the adoption of structured management practices in manufacturing startups and whether such practices relate to early performance. Using a novel dataset linking employer-employee data from the LEHD and management practice data from the ASM-MOPS, I show that structured management practices demonstrate an inverse U-shaped curve in relation to large firm experience within entrepreneurial teams. While small-firm experience alone is negatively associated, I find that it can act as a buffer to large firm effects. The results highlight how cumulative career experiences on a team level and their interdepencies can influence early organizational design in growth-oriented startups. 

We examine the relationship between innovation complexity and molecular complexity in the pharmaceutical industry. While prior research argues that innovation has become increasingly complex over time, descriptive evidence suggests that small molecule drugs have become less complex at the molecular level. Using data on drug compounds, patents, and development pipelines, the study analyzes when and why innovation complexity and molecular complexity diverge. The project aims to explain how organizational, technological, and regulatory forces shape the structure of innovation in pharmaceutical R&D. 

This conceptual paper develops a framework contrasting classic theories of industry growth with the dynamics of platformmediated industries. I argue that in discovery-constrained environments, demand is endogenously shaped by attention, recommendation, and engagement rather than exogenous market expansion, leading to competitive behaviors that diverge from traditional models. The framework explains why collaboration among close competitors and early organizational scaling can coexist in platform settings. The paper provides a unifying theoretical lens for understanding competition, growth, and organization in modern platform-based markets.