Cross-disciplinary Seminar Series in

Strategy and Entrepreneurship

Intermediate Selection on a Developmental Journey

Dan Levinthal

Julian Aresty Professor of Management and Economics

Professor of Management

Chairperson, Management

The Wharton School

University of Pennsylvania
May 6, 2005
Room 1412, 10:30am-12:00noon

Abstract:  We examine the joint processes of organizational development and population selection to highlight a dynamic interaction overlooked when considering the processes in isolation. Selection does not operate on quasi-stable traits directly, but rather on contemporaneous performance. Consequently, stable search strategies may be favored by selection on bases other than long-run performance, such as intertemporal performance stability and the rate of performance improvement. Using a computational model of firm innovative efforts guided by stable search strategies under alternative selection regimes, we find that the relative efficacy of alternative search strategies is reversed depending upon the inclusion or exclusion of selection.

Daniel Levinthal is the Julian Aresty Professor of Management and Economics at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and currently serves as Chairman of the Management Department at Wharton (2001 to present). He received his Ph.D. from the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University and his initial academic appointment was at the Graduate School of Industrial Administration, Carnegie Mellon University from 1983 to 1989. Since 1989, Levinthal has been a faculty member at Wharton. During the 1997-98 academic year, he was a Bower Fellow at the Harvard Business School. His research interests focus on issues of organizational adaptation and industry evolution, particularly in the context of technological change

For information about the series, contact Bob Jones at rjones@rhsmith.umd.edu.