04/14/2022
By Chongyang Zhou

The Robert J. Manning School of Business, Department of Marketing, Entrepreneurship, and Innovation, invites you to attend a Ph.D. Dissertation Proposal Defense by William Chongyang Zhou.

Doctoral Candidate: William Chongyang Zhou
Proposal Defense Date: April 29, 2022
Time: 2-3 p.m.
Location: Zoom meeting

Dissertation proposal title: Three essays on business models and green innovation

Dissertation Committee Members:


  • Sunny Li Sun, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship, University of Massachusetts Lowell (Dissertation Committee Chair)
  • Yi Yang, Ph.D., Professor of Entrepreneurship, University of Massachusetts Lowell
  • Ying Huang, Ph.D., Professor of Marketing, University of Massachusetts Lowell
  • Phillip Kim, Ph.D., Lewis Family Distinguished Professor in Social Innovation, Babson College

Abstract:

In the first essay, drawing upon up the activity-system perspective of business model and international entrepreneurship literature, I theorize that business model scalability is a key driver of foreign market entry. To overcome foreign entry barriers, highly scalable business models do not need to change the core activities, but only modify the peripheral activities of their business models; in comparison, less scalable business models need to modify core activities and reexamine the inter-complementarity within the activity systems, the strategic fit between activity systems and the environment, and the governance of the boundary-spanning activities with stakeholders. Therefore, new ventures with highly scalable business models are easier to enter a foreign market. I further explore the boundary conditions and find that information infrastructure of the host country and venture capital support strengthen the relationship between business model scalability and foreign market entry likelihood, while venture age weakens it.

In the second essay, I explore how new ventures can achieve scalable growth via allocating resources globally. I explore the influence of digital business models, global supply chains, global marketing, global R&D, and product market competition on new venture scalability.

In the third essay, I ask, how does corporate green transition, with sustainability assurance, affect firm innovation? With a combined theoretical lens of organization transition and innovation search, I conduct a multi-level analysis to investigate corporate green transition and how it changes firm’s innovation behavior. I argue that green transition is a shock to firm’s existing search routines, encouraging innovators to deviate their previous search trajectory, fostering their green mindset, and changing their search routines accordingly. Under a microfoundations lens, I conduct a patent-level analysis to investigate the influence of green transition on search routines, characterized by search scope, search breadth and ambidextrous search.