RESEARCH INTERESTS
Topics: Industry Foresight, Technology Strategy, Behavioral Strategy
Methods: Quantitative, NLP, Machine Learning, Forecasting Tournaments
PUBLICATIONS
Peering Into a Crystal Ball: Forecasting Behavior and Industry Foresight
(equal authorship with Rahul Kapoor)
Distinguished Paper Award in Behavioral Strategy, Process and Change at the 80th Academy of Management Annual Meeting
forthcoming Strategic Management Journal
ABSTRACT:
Research summary
What makes some managers and entrepreneurs better at forecasting the industry context than others? We argue that, regardless of experience or expertise, a learning-based forecasting behavior in which individuals attend to and incorporate new relevant information from the environment into an updated belief that aligns with the Bayesian belief updating process is likely to generate superior industry foresight. However, the effectiveness of such a cognitively demanding process diminishes under high levels of uncertainty. We find support for these arguments using an experimental design of forecasting tournaments in the managerially relevant context of the global automotive industry from 2016-2019. The study provides a novel account of individual-level forecasting behavior and its effectiveness in an evolving industry, and suggests important implications for managers and entrepreneurs.
Managerial summary
How a focal industry will evolve is a key forecasting problem faced by managers and entrepreneurs as they seek to identify opportunities and make strategic decisions. However, developing superior industry foresight in the face of significant change, and limited and often contradictory information, can be especially challenging. We study how individuals forecast the ongoing transformation of the global automotive industry with respect to electrification and autonomy, using a novel research design of forecasting tournaments. A forecasting process in which individuals update their beliefs by neither ignoring prior information nor overeacting to new information helps to generate superior industry foresight. There was a significant penalty to forecasting accuracy when individuals did not update their beliefs at all, or when they updated, but overreacted to new information.
KEYWORDS: Industry Evolution, Forecasting, Belief Updating, Automobile Industry, Bayesian Process
WORKING PAPERS
Driving Commitment: Evaluative Divergence and Strategic Decision-Making in the Auto Industry
Job Market Paper of Dissertation, which won The Outstanding Dissertation Award for my field of Strategy and Runner-Up award in the INFORMS/Organization Science Dissertation Proposal Competition
Preparing for Organization Science
ABSTRACT: Managers within organizations often hold diverse beliefs, perceptions, and opinions, particularly during periods of technological change. Drawing on learning and political perspectives, I investigate how cognitive diversity surrounding a strategic issue, which I term “contextual cognitive diversity,” influences subsequent actions of the firm. I argue that higher contextual cognitive diversity simultaneously focuses managers' attention on and increases the ambiguity of the strategic issue, leading to flexible, incremental investments. Conversely, lower contextual cognitive diversity fosters cognitive cohesion regarding the issue, boosting executive confidence and facilitating substantial, large commitments. I find support for these propositions by utilizing a novel dataset of over 200,000 automotive industry-related quotes, along with data on corporate venture capital, acquisitions, alliances, and patenting of the major automobile manufacturers amidst the emergence of new technologies and business models. Additionally, in a series of post hoc analyses, I examine differences in cognitive diversity at the top management team and middle management levels and identify various underlying mechanisms. This theory and findings enrich the managerial cognition literature by illuminating how variations in cognitive diversity relate to strategic decisions during periods of technological change and highlight the challenge of aligning different organizational actors in the face of ambiguity and uncertainty.
KEYWORDS: managerial cognition, contextual cognitive diversity, flexibility, commitment, automotive industry, technological change
Forecasting as a Problem of Cognitive Search: Experimental Evidence from Forecasting Tournaments in the Context of the Auto Industry
(equal authorship with Rahul Kapoor)
Distinguished Paper Award in Strategic Leadership and Corporate Governance at Academy of Management Annual Meeting
Reject & Resubmit at Strategic Management Journal
ABSTRACT: Having superior industry foresight has been deemed as an important enabler for effective decision making. We explore the antecedents of superior industry foresight by conceptualizing the forecasting process as a problem-solving process. Individuals face the problem of forecasting the specific industry context under conditions of significant uncertainty and limited information by searching for relevant information and developing conjectures about the specific industry outcome. We argue that an individual’s ability to forecast accurately will depend on the problem’s complexity and structure. Forecasting accuracy would be highest for low-complexity well-structured problems, lowest for high-complexity ill-structured problems, and intermediate for high-complexity well-structured and low-complexity ill-structured problems. The data for the study were collected from two successive year-long forecasting tournaments conducted between 2017 and 2019, focusing on the evolution of the automotive industry shaped by the emergence of electric and autonomous vehicles. Evidence from more than 15,000 forecasts made by over 2,300 individuals who participate in a leading global forecasting platform, offers support for our arguments. We also explore how individuals may improve their forecasting by updating their beliefs, and for which types of forecasting problems the belief updating process is likely to be more effective.
KEYWORDS: Problem Solving, Cognitive Search, Problem Complexity, Ill-structured problems, Industry Trends
The Long and Short of It: Individual-Level Industry Forecasting and Temporal Duality
(equal authorship with Rahul Kapoor)
Best Paper Prize, Behavioral Strategy at Strategic Management Society Annual Conference
ABSTRACT: Forecasting the industry context underpins much of the canonical perspectives within the field of Strategy. Additionally, many of the core tradeoffs illuminated in the field are premised upon different forward-looking expectations between short-term and long-term outcomes. While extant literature has begun to offer important clarity regarding antecedents toward superior foresight, the focus has largely been on understanding foresight around short-term outcomes, which is but half of the story. In this study, we complement existing literature by offering a perspective of how individuals navigate the complexities of forecasting across different temporal horizons: a duality between short- and long-term issues. Integrating the behavioral decision theory and industry evolution literatures, we argue that individuals tend to overreact in the short-term of industry evolution and underreact in the long term due to a fundamental difference between common linear cognitive processes and nonlinear (S-curve) industry outcomes. Utilizing a novel dataset of 7,569 forecasts by 505 participants who participated in parallel short-term and long-term industry forecasting tournaments related to the evolution of the automotive industry, we find support for our hypotheses.
KEYWORDS: long-term foresight, forecasting tournaments, automotive industry
Unraveling the Foresight-Performance Paradox
(with Mark Packard)
ABSTRACT: The prevailing belief within the strategy and entrepreneurship fields is that superior foresight is a critical driver of competitive advantage. However, this relationship is much more nuanced. While superior foresight can enhance strategic alignment and performance, it may also hinder adaptability and foster inertia. To reconcile the "foresight performance paradox", we develop a theoretical framework that distinguishes between two fundamental dimensions of foresight: scope, which varies between divergent and convergent in its objectives, and orientation, which ranges from internal to external in nature. We argue that the impact of foresight on performance varies significantly depending on these dimensions and their interaction with the business context. This research provides a critical roadmap for future theoretical and empirical work related to foresight in strategy and entrepreneurship.
KEYWORDS: foresight-performance tradeoff, divergent foresight, convergent foresight, internal foresight, external foresight
RESEARCH IN PROGRESS
Project on managerial evaluations, structure, and decision making outcomes
(with Tomasz Obloj)
Data analysis stage
Project on counterfactual thinking and foresight
(with Rahul Kapoor & Phil Tetlock)
data gathering stage
Effortful Innovation Emergence: Evidence from the Nuclear Fusion Industry
(with Jax Kirtley)
data gathering stage
AWARDS & HONORS
Winner—Outstanding Dissertation Award, Strategy Division (2024)
Finalist—Industry Studies Association Dissertation Award (2024)
Best Paper Proceedings, Academy of Management (2024)
Behavioral Strategy Best Paper Prize, SMS (2023)
Runner-up of the INFORMS/Organization Science Dissertation Proposal Competition (2021)
Distinguished Paper Award—STR Division in Strategic Leadership and Corporate Governance (2021)
Best Paper Proceedings, Academy of Management (2021)
Distinguished Paper Award—STR Division in Behavioral Strategy, Process and Change (2020)
Best Paper Proceedings, Academy of Management (2020)
Gladiator Champion—1st place public speaking award for BYU MBA class of 2017 (2016)
PYTHON CODE
Factiva Articles Download to Dataframe
PURPOSE: This code takes html-formatted articles from Factiva search results and iteratively converts the html to a single dataframe.
News Article Quote Extraction and Attribution
PURPOSE: This code takes the dataframe from code above and extracts quotes and paraphrases and attributes each to the speaker (speaker's full name, speaker title/role, speaker affiliated organization). It also collects information associated with organizations.
INTERACTIVE AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY NETWORK DATA
Below is a sample of the inter-firm connections across the global automotive industry as of 2020. I gathered these data as part of my dissertation work with a mix of Pitchbook, SDC Platinum, Crunchbase, and Google. Each node (blue oval) represents a firm in the industry and each link (blue line) between nodes represents an investment of some kind (e.g., joint venture, alliance, minority investment, acquisition). Can share upon request.
The network is interactive, so feel free to zoom in, click and drag any node as you see fit.
NOTE: Given the complexity of the network, it may take a minute or two to show up on your browser.
A Contingency Model of Foresight and Firm Performance
developing propositions