Vision Statement

By Howard Frank, Dean
Robert H. Smith School of Business

Research for the Digital Economy

As world-class teachers and researchers, Smith faculty members are knowledge leaders, creating knowledge that is helping to shape the business practices of the networked global economy. Great business schools are great research schools. Great research leads to great curricula, and great researchers are frequently great teachers. Indeed, this past year, six of the top research schools worldwide, as ranked by the Financial Times, are also among the top ten teaching schools as ranked by Business Week. These are Berkeley, Stanford, Chicago, Northwestern, MIT, and the Robert H. Smith School of Business. What’s more, Smith School faculty is setting the standards for world-class business research for the digital economy. The following examples illustrate faculty research activities that make the Smith School a research leader for the digital economy.

Financial Sector Reform:
• Study financial sector reforms in emerging markets;
• Examine the effects of deposit insurance and regulatory schemes on financial development and stability across many countries, using unique large-scale databases;
• Analyze incentivized banking regulation;
• Explore the role of technological progress in banking markets;
• Observe credit screening, interest rates, and returns.

Databases, Models, Derivatives, and Options:
• Use U.S. Census Bureau data to profile and track the evolution of U.S. manufacturing corporations and their financing over time in a way not possible using conventional available financial data;
• Use complex statistical analyses and model testing on large samples drawn from multiple databases to extract patterns;
• Apply stochastic volatility option-pricing models to improve the valuation of options contracts for derivatives;
• Apply variance gamma model developed for market-to-market and manage options positions at major investment banks;
• Test “repricing” of stock options and their effectiveness as low-cost mechanisms to retain and provide incentives for executives and other employees.

e-Service:
• Help companies navigate the new, tougher world of e-commerce, in which customers decide which companies succeed and which do not;
• Explore the impact of e-government on small business performance;
• Co-sponsor the American Marketing Association’s annual Frontiers in Services Conference;
• Publish research studies in the Journal of Service Research;
•Spearhead the National Technology Readiness Survey.

Customer Equity:
• Track and model profitability of customers over time, leading to models of customer lifetime value and customer equity;
• Develop strategic insights for the firm and to make marketing expenditures financially accountable;
• Provide a unifying framework for trading off competing strategic options via customer equity concepts.

Entrepreneurship:
• Assemble the broadest possible collection of evidentiary materials, ranging from detailed company documents to more than 1,200 business plans describing planned digital economy companies;
• Explore why new U.S. manufacturing companies are slow to adopt digital manufacturing technology compared to established U.S. manufacturers and new Japanese manufacturers;
• Study why particular digital technologies are commercialized in start-ups vs. established firms;
• Examine the relationship between strong intellectual property rights and the level of innovation in the digital economy.

Human Resources:
• Examine the relationship between information technology and human resources management;
• Attract women and minority knowledge workers and professionals to the IT industry;
• Research how organizational recruitment strategies adopted by IT companies affect work force diversity;
• Investigate how the procedural, interactive, and distributive justices perceived by information technology employees contribute to the incidence and costs of information technology sabotage.

Organizational Behavior:
• Study the role of motivation in how organizations search for and discover new opportunities in an increasingly dynamic and competitive landscape;
• Examine the sharing and usage of critical knowledge among managers and workers through organizational cultures that foster trust and incentive systems that fuel knowledge transfer;
• Explore the factors necessary for the successful usage of new and emerging forms of teamwork and collaboration, emphasizing the roles of communication and information technology.

Strategy:
• Identify the antecedents and economic consequences of CEO reputation in the digital economy, focusing specifically on newly created digital firms;
• Examine the role of social and political (besides economic) factors on the pricing of IPOs, as well as the success vs. failure of IPO firms in the digital economy;
• Study the dynamics of knowledge transfer within large, complex organizations in the digital economy;
• Investigate the antecedents and consequences of firms’ new-knowledge creation capabilities among technology-based companies.

Electronic Markets:
• Design electronic markets for time-sensitive goods and services, like entertainment/sporting events, hotel rooms, and airline seats;
• Analyze and design electronic auctions similar to those of eBay;
• Examine trust and communities in electronic markets;
• Implement eProcurement practices;
• Design an Electronic Markets Lab to develop prototype technologies and research their effectiveness and usability.

Creating Corporate Value through Information Technology:
• Adopt and diffuse new information technologies at the individual, team, and organizational levels;
• Design available-to-promise systems, like the direct-to-customer system used by Dell;
• Employ collaborative decision-making with multiple agents (e.g., airlines working with FAA, or logistics and delivery systems);
• Structure software teams and business process outsourcing;
• Use economic incentives in facilitating information-sharing.

Wireless Networking and the Mobile Organization:
• Business value of mobility and mobile services;
• Future design of mobile networks.

Data Mining and Digital Delivery:
• Data mining;
• Data delivery and data warehousing

Economics of Information Security:
• Examine the economic framework for firms to determine how much to invest in cyber-security activities;
• Explore the economic impact of confidentiality breaches on the stock values of major corporations.

The Internet and Supply Chain Management:
• Explore how information technology, including the Internet, affects different supply chains and their participants;
• Measure the operational and economic benefits of a more efficient supply chain;
• Examine the strategic threats and opportunities for supply-chain incumbents and entrants.

Intellectual Property:
• Explore ownership rights on knowledge assets;
• Examine intellectual property strategies used in various contexts (stand-alone vs. systemic innovation) and industries (drugs, computers, software);
• Determine the implications for public policy stemming from different aspects of intellectual property, like patent pools and stronger patents in complex product industries.

 ►Netcentricity Laboratories