Research Papers

Still, Mr. Mehta does not think he has discovered any secrets. “This business remains so fascinating because it is so dogged with uncertainty,” he said. “I still find it as confusing as when I started.” He smiled and added, “Merrily, we beat our heads against the wall.”
Sonny Mehta of Knopf on uncertainty in the publishing business

SOCIAL NETWORKS AND CONNECTION

I use randomized controlled trials (field experiments), large scale data, and natural experiments to study how connections between people—peers, collaborators, colleagues—shape individual, organizational and community outcomes. Particularly innovation and achivement.

Gentrification and Racial Distrust in Communities: Evidence from 911 Calls (with Uttara Ananthakrishnan and Anuj Kumar), Forthcoming, Management Science [pdf]

Helpful Behavior and the Durability of Collaborative Ties
(with Sampsa Samila and Alexander Oettl), Organization Science 33(5):1816-1836. [pdf] (Check out my post on when relationships become transactions)

Designing Social Networks: Joint Tasks and the Formation and Endurance of Network Ties
(with Rembrand Koning), Journal of Organizational Design 9 (1), 1-19 [pdf]

When Does Advice Impact Startup Performance?
(with Aaron Chatterji, Solene Delecourt, and Rembrand Koning), Strategic Management Journal 40 (3), 331-356 [pdf]

Prior Social Ties and the Limits of Peer Effects on Startup Team Performance
(with Rembrand Koning), Strategic Management Journal 40 (9), 1394-1416 [pdf]

Conversations and Idea Generation: Evidence from a Field Experiment
(with Rembrand Koning), Research Policy 48(9), 103811 [pdf] (Substack post creativity, critique and judgment here )

Peers and Network Growth: Evidence from a Natural Experiment
(with Surendrakumar Bagde), Management Science 61 (10), 2536-2547 [pdf]

The Mechanics of Social Capital and Academic Performance in an Indian College
(with Surendrakumar Bagde), American Sociological Review 78(6), 1009-1032 [pdf]

Group Based Trajectories of Network Formation and Dynamics Social Networks 34(4), 506-514.

Social Networks and Careers
in Social Networks at Work, D.J. Brass and S.P. Borgatti (eds.) SIOP Frontiers Book Series, 2020.

INNOVATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP

I study what determines innovation and entrepreneurial success: I’ve found that judgment (taste, discrimination, ability to evaluate) and connection (access to wisdom, diverse perspectives) drive the development and scaling of novel ideas and businesses.

When Do Intermediaries Slow Scientific Diffusion? Evidence from Google Search (with Wesley Cohen and Roger Masclans)

Managing LLM Teams for Collaborative Problem Solving (with David Hsu Prasanna Tambe), (Coming soon)

Opinion is Cheaper than Fact: Business Strategies in Political News(with Aaron Chatterji, Dror Shvadron and William Miles) Working paper (Revise and Resubmit at Management Science).

Which Businesses Enroll in Innovation Training? Evidence from a Field Experiment (with Pascal Crama, Reddi Kotha, Vish Krishnan, Cintia Kulzer Sacilotto, and Chon-Phung Lim), Revise and Resubmit at Strategic Management Journal (January 2022)

If You Had One Shot: Scale and Herding in Innovation Experiments
(with A. Arora and W. Miles) Working paper. (National Bureau of Economics Research Working Paper 33682)

Taste Before Production: The Role of Judgment in Entrepreneurial Idea Generation (Substack post creativity, critique and judgment here )
(with Aaron Chatterji, Rick Larrick, and Roger Masclans), Working Paper (Oct 2023)

Measuring the Commercial Potential of Science [download data]
(with Wesley Cohen and Roger Masclans), Articles in Advance Strategic Management Journal (March 2024); National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 32262 (Substack post on defining deep tech + Duke deeptech research )

Experimentation and Startup Performance: Evidence from A/B Testing
(with Rembrand Koning and Aaron Chatterji), Management Science 68(9):6434-6453 [pdf] (Substack post creativity, critique and judgment here )

Designing Social Networks: Joint Tasks and the Formation and Endurance of Network Ties
(with Rembrand Koning), Journal of Organizational Design 9 (1), 1-19 [pdf]

When Does Advice Impact Startup Performance?
(with Aaron Chatterji, Solene Delecourt, and Rembrand Koning), Strategic Management Journal 40 (3), 331-356 [pdf]

Prior Social Ties and the Limits of Peer Effects on Startup Team Performance
(with Rembrand Koning), Strategic Management Journal 40 (9), 1394-1416 [pdf]

Conversations and Idea Generation: Evidence from a Field Experiment
(with Rembrand Koning), Research Policy 48(9), 103811 [pdf] (Substack post creativity, critique and judgment here )

Organizational Decision-Making and the Returns to Experimentation
(with Todd Hall), Journal of Organization Design (Jan 2023) [pdf]

Winner of the 2025 Organization Design Community Best Paper Award.

Field Experiments in Entrepreneurship and Innovation (with Chiara Spina) in De Gruyter Handbook of Sociology of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Olav Sorenson and Patricia H. Thornton (eds.), 2024

HUMAN CAPITAL

My work in this area asks: How do organizations access, develop, and deploy human capital? And what structural prevent efficient matching between people and opportunities?

Gray Areas: Firm-Level Strategies and Workforce Age Distributions (with Ines Black, Yoko Shibuya, Maria Zhu), (Coming soon)

When Does Information Lead to Action?: Evidence from Three Experiments on STEM Skill Acquisition (with Michael Faber and William Miles)

The Aging Firm (with Ines Black, Yoko Shibuya, Maria Zhu), Working Paper (Articles in Advance in Research in Organizational Behavior).

Hunting for Talent: Firm-driven Labor Market Search in America
(with Ines Black and Rembrand Koning), Forthcoming, Strategic Management Journal (May 2022) [pdf] (Check out my substack on labor markets here)

Who Captures the Value from Organizational Ratings?: Evidence from Public Schools (with Anuj Kumar), Forthcoming, Strategy Science [pdf]

Formerly titled “Digitization and Divergence: Online School Ratings and Segregation in America”
Covered in: Vox; Mother Jones; EducationWeek; New York Times; The 74 Million; Thomas Fordham Institute; THE Journal; Poverty and Race Research Action Council; Urban Institute; PBS

The Lives and Deaths of Jobs: Technical Interdependence and Survival in a Job Structure (with John-Paul Ferguson and Rembrand Koning), Organization Science 26(6), 1665-1681 [pdf]

Specialization and Career Dynamics: Evidence from the Indian Administrative Service (with John-Paul Ferguson), Administrative Science Quarterly 58 (2), 233-256 [pdf]

MACHINE LEARNING / ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

I study how Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning systems reshape organizational design. My work shows that introducing automation may not so easily replace human organization, but rather redistribute complexity across the human-machine system. This creates new trade-offs that require intentional organizational design.

From Model Design to Organizational Design: Complexity Redistribution and Trade-Offs in Generative AI (with Alexander Oettl and Sampsa Samila), Available on SSRN and arXiv.

Data exchanges among firms. (with Morad Elsaify) Digital Business 1.2 (2021): 100010.

Automatic Detection of Omissions in Medication Lists
(with George T. Duncan, Daniel B. Neill, and Rema Padman),Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association 18 (4), 449-458 [pdf]

Towards a collaborative filtering approach to medication reconciliation
(with George T. Duncan, Daniel B. Neill, and Rema Padman) AMIA Annu Symp Proc.. 2008: 288–292.

Analyzing the Effect of Data Quality on the Accuracy of Clinical Decision Support Systems: A Computer Simulation Approach
(with Rema Padman) AMIA Annu Symp Proc.. 2006: 324–328.