Carolyn J. Fu

        

I am an Assistant Professor in the Strategy Unit at Harvard Business School. I study innovation strategy — specifically, how firms can uncover new sources of value through their interactions with the wider innovation ecosystem.

I obtained my PhD in Economic Sociology at MIT's Sloan School of Management. I previously worked in defence research, leading projects on elite combat performance; and founded a non-profit organization raising entrepreneurial intention in Singapore. I obtained my BSE in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, MSE in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University, and MS in Engineering and Management from MIT.


Research

My research is anchored in organizational learning and economic sociology, examining how learning mechanisms (such as interdependence and cognition), coupled with sociological mechanisms (such as status and legitimacy), influence how and where valued innovations arise in an ecosystem. I utilize both computational simulations and qualitative archival methods to develop organizational theory that is grounded and extensive.

My current work examines this in the settings of ballet, opera, quantum computing and video games.

Select working papers:
  • Fu CJ "Overcoming a Naive Strategist: A Learning Failsafe in Strategy Formation" R&R at Strategic Management Journal. Previous version available at https://osf.io/9u7q2/
    Abstract

    Effective strategy formation requires a balance between deliberate and emergent strategy–entailing a mutual learning process where managers articulate a clear strategy for the firm, while allowing it to be informed by employees’ activities across the firm. Unfortunately, employees’ activities can be highly context-specific due to the presence of interdependencies, making it difficult for managers to put together a coherent strategy, especially if they are naïve to the underlying interdependencies. However, this paper demonstrates that such naivete can be overcome by leaning further into the process of mutual learning with employees. Despite initially poor performance, persistent mutual learning ensures a convergence of knowledge in the firm, simplifying the manager’s learning challenge over time, and enabling them to establish effective strategy in the long run.


  • Fu CJ "Setting the Stage: The Interplay of Firm Boundary and Learning at the Opera"
    Abstract

    Vertical integration has traditionally been understood as having distinct advantages for systemic innovation – enabling firms to experiment with different combinations of resources, so as to achieve valuable innovations in product architecture. However, the possibility for disintegrated markets to also provide such innovations has not been well investigated. In this study, we see that if specialized producers in a disintegrated market are motivated by reputational concerns, they likewise experiment with valuable product architectures they can participate in. The market then offers a multitude of systemic innovations that a given firm can leverage. Furthermore, the availability of these systemic innovations in the market means that greater integration can in fact be detrimental to a firm’s attempts to innovate. This study examines this opportunity and challenge through the surprising disintegration of an opera company that sought to integrate for the sake of systemic innovation, but ultimately abandoned this in order to leverage the novel product architectures offered by specialized producers in the market. This study utilizes both a qualitative archival analysis and a computational simulation to clarify the benefits that market-level search for systemic innovations can offer, and demonstrate how a firm can in fact undercut this value by attempting to integrate.

  • Fu CJ "Experimental Pas de Deux: Coupled Firm and Audience Learning at the Ballet"
    Abstract

    Strategies for innovation typically call for firms to isolate their experimentation as much as possible from their core activities, so as to allow them to explore in ways that are not constrained by the existing capabilities or routines of the wider firm. However, such strategies do not consider the fact that audiences, especially in cultural or nascent technological markets, often make sense of the value of innovations by relating these to the firm’s core products. In opposition to prior innovation strategy, this then calls for firms to engage in more incremental experimentation. This paper uses a qualitative archival analysis of a ballet company to elucidate the challenge this creates for experimentation, and how firms can address this by strategically choosing their audience with whom to experiment, and periodically replacing their experimentation units.


  • Fu CJ, Frolund L, Murray F (2021) "Enabling Mission Impact: Funding Strategies for High-Risk High-Reward Innovation". MIT Innovation Initiative Policy Working Paper.