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Publishing a Lot of Great Stuff:

Balancing Productivity and Creativity Violina Rindova, McCombs School of Business,

University of Texas at Austin

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1.  The Big Picture n  Positioning

n  Program

n  Pipeline

2.  Personal Innovation Management n  Production versus R&D

n  Partnering

n  Project management

3.  Publishing

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n  Markets are structured by categories -- define audience expectations about appropriate and desirable attributes of category members

n  Disciplines

n  Theories

n  Themes

n  Facilitate and guide categorization: n  Authors cited and work synthesized

n  Interdisciplinary boundaries crossing

n  Advisor and committee member expertise signals

Positioning

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n  Volume n  More than a single dissertation project

n  Coherence n  Some degree of theoretical, thematic or methodological

connection across papers

n  Potential n  Novelty

n  Significance of contribution

n  In the eye of the beholder => perceptions may vary across schools

Program

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n  An asset n  Progress toward tenure

n  Throughout an academic career

n  A signal n  Of project completion experience –“been around the block”

n  Of sustained research productivity

Pipeline

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n  Production versus R&D

n  Partnering

n  Project management

Personal Lessons from Innovation Management

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n R&D develops your intellectual assets: n  Theories

n  Methods

n  Databases

n Invest in R&D while in the PhD program!

n Gain some experience in operations

R&D

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n Manuscript development

n R&D is not production

n Track production time out of total research time n  80% of time in first two-three years after graduation

n  60% in the subsequent two-three years

Production

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n  Source of many benefits for start-ups – consult relevant literature reviews

n Access complementary skills

n Build “the second research stream”

n  Senior colleagues at your institution

n  Junior colleagues at your institution

n  Friendship networks

Partnering

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n  Manage the portfolio: n  Balance fast and slow moving papers n  Balance exploiting and exploring n  Optimize number

n  More than one – leverage and learning n  Less than a dozen – avoid crowding and forgetting effects

n  Establish consistent milestones activities –e.g. data collection, first complete draft

n  Regularly assess: n  Each project’s status n  Relative progress (re-prioritize accordingly) n  Overall portfolio

n  Take advantage of “hard deadlines” to create urgency – e.g. AOM, special issues

Project Management

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n THINK BOLDLY BUT RESPECT THE “CRAFT” AND THE “GUILD”

n AVOID ISOLATION

n PUT YOUR BEST FOOT FORWARD

n REJOICE BUT REVISE

n REVISE, DO NOT RESENT

+Discipline in Execution Enables Creative Exploration

n “If top management is able to alternatively let chaos reign and then reign chaos, such a dialectic can be very productive.”

Andrew Grove