Entrepreneurship & Innovation

We introduce a novel approach to measure the founding strategic differentiation of startups and its relationship to follow-on performance. We use natural language processing and historical websites to estimate the similarity between the founding website of an individual startup, the historical website of public firms at the startup's founding year, and the founding website of other startups founded in the same year. We propose that distance in the value proposition stated in these websites represents differentiation in the market.

Being a successful manager or entrepreneur in the media and digital sector requires creativity, innovation, and performance. It also requires an understanding of the principles and tools of management. Aimed at the college market, this book is a short, foundational volume on media management. It summarizes the major dimensions of a business school curriculum and applies them to the entire media, media-tech, and digital sector. Its chapters cover—in a jargonless, non-technical way—the major functions of management.

What does it take for success in the media business? Creativity, innovation, and performance, of course. Plus experience and good judgment. However, it also requires an understanding of the principles and tools of management. This book summarizes the major dimensions of a business school curriculum and applies them to the entire media, media-tech, and digital sectors. Its chapters cover—in a jargonless, non-technical way—the major management functions.

Organizations often empower employees at all levels to propose innovation ideas that rely on their first-hand knowledge of their standard task (i.e. employee-initiated innovation). Many, however, struggle with motivating employees to develop innovative ideas that may benefit the firm, especially when the standard tasks for which employees are hired, measured and incentivized do not explicitly include innovation.

The current research explores the relationship between living abroad and self-concept clarity. We conducted six studies (N = 1,874) using different populations (online panels and MBA students), mixed methods (correlational and experimental), and complementary measures of self-concept clarity (self-report and self-other congruence through 360-degree ratings). Our results indicate that living abroad leads to a clearer sense of self because it prompts self-discerning reflections on whether parts of their identity truly define who they are or merely reflect their cultural upbringing.

Air pollution is a serious problem that affects billions of people globally. Although the environmental and health costs of air pollution are well known, the present research investigates its ethical costs. We propose that air pollution can increase criminal and unethical behavior by increasing anxiety. Analyses of a 9-year panel of 9,360 U.S.

Prior studies linking grit — defined as perseverance and passion for long-term goals — to performance are beset by contradictory evidence. As a result, commentators have increasingly declared that grit has limited effects. We propose that this inconsistent evidence has occurred because prior research has emphasized perseverance and ignored, both theoretically and empirically, the critical role of passion, which we define as a strong feeling toward a personally important value/preference that motivates intentions and behaviors to express that value/preference.

People quickly form impressions about moral character; for example, if people learn that someone cheated, they form a negative impression about that person's character and expect that person to cheat in the future. Four studies show that the formation of such moral character impressions depends on the degree of valence homogeneity in the target's context. We argue that this is the case because the degree of homogeneity in the context (the evaluative ecology) informs perceivers about the reliability of signals.

The current research offers a new theoretical perspective on the relationship between power and persuasion. An agentic-communal model of power is presented that proposes power affects both the type of messages generated by communicators and the types of messages that persuade audiences. Compared to low-power and neutral states, high-power states produce a greater emphasis on information that conveys competence. As a consequence, high-power communicators generate messages with greater competence information and high-power audiences are persuaded more by competence information.